The Shiralee

by D'Arcy Niland

He left the wall doubled, grunting for breath, spitting blood.

  The woman was shrieking, ‘Don’t! Don’t! You’ll kill him!’

  For another five minutes the butchery went on. Macauley pulled the man’s head back, held him upright by his hair. The last hit put him across the bed, and Macauley remembered him there with his head in her lap, with all his nakedness under her horrified eyes.

  He’s all yours.

  Macauley said nothing more. He looked about the room, hating it, clenching his fists with the violence left in him and nothing to loose it on. He disregarded the tapping on the door. He took one last look at the woman, sobbing bitterly, and looked from her to the child who had slept through it all half doped with aspirin.

  He grabbed her up and took her as she was in her pyjamas. Her head fell on the pillow of his shoulder. He wrenched the door open and the group of nightclad tenants on the landing gaped and shuffled and made way; and he tramped on ragefully down the stairs out of the residential for ever.

  And he went on remembering, his brain stepping and catapulting itself from one thing to another up and down the years until he saw himself on the floor in Beauty Kelly’s house, the present heavy on him, the future waiting to be unpicked, and his mind rambling out to explore it.

  Kelly was chanting the count, banging the big drum, lining the fighters up on the board again, spruiking to the crowd: chuckling and gibbering and muttering. Then, in a little while, he stopped. Macauley heard him reaching down automatically for the clock, and then winding it twice – for time and alarm. And he realised that all along he had not been unconscious; he had been awake, plotting the past, enjoying a delusion. In a few minutes he heard Kelly snoring.

  Macauley felt for tomorrow, but his mind faltered, fainted, caught in the drift of sleep.

  He was awake early and moving quietly about. He lit the fire and put the kettle on. While he waited he got most of his gear together, and went over his finances. He kept his money, the folding kind, in a travelling branch of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company – an empty golden-syrup tin. With what was in that and loose in his pockets he had £4 17s. 6d. That wasn’t bad. He wasn’t on the rocks yet.

  He heard Buster stirring. He crept over to her, rousing her and telling her to be quiet and not wake the man up. Her face was scarlet and burning, her eyes sick and cloudy, the lids dropping heavily. She stood up and struggled into her clothes. Macauley did up the buttons, He threw a towel on her shoulder and she dawdled outside to wash her face.

  When she came back he had his swag rolled and strapped. She wasn’t hungry but he made her eat a piece of toast slathered with butter. She enjoyed the hot lemon drink, holding her hands round the mug and sipping silently. Macauley crunched into the toast and washed it down with tea. Then he gave her more eucalyptus and sugar, and sprinkled eucalyptus on her handkerchief and told her to snuff it up every so often.

  Suddenly the alarm shrilled, momentarily startling them. On the bed Kelly twisted, then turned quickly over, stifled the clock and fell back. He shook his head and opened his eyes. He sat up covering his face with his hands and letting the hands drag down the flesh and fall away. He smiled and nodded when he saw them.

  ‘Well, good morning,’ he cried, stretching and yawning. ‘How’d you sleep?’

  ‘Stay there,’ Macauley said. ‘I’ve got the tea made.’

  He poured out a mug, and brought it over to Kelly. Kelly laughed. ‘Well, how’s that for a pal? Thanks, Mac.’

  There was no sign of a hangover about him. He looked fresh and spirited. But Macauley noticed the same subtle mien he had detected yesterday morning. Kelly was still in the holts of sousy well-being.

  ‘You remember winding that clock last night?’

  Kelly darted a glance at him, looked amused. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t, but I’m not surprised. It’s a funny thing, that.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t matter whether I come home pickled, dog-tired, out on my feet, somehow that clock always gets wound. I always leave her set for seven-thirty. She gets me up everytime. Never fails.’

  And Macauley understood why: the habit that was an extra organ in Kelly: the habit that was his offsider and bodyguard. It never let him down. He had trained it to understand that it couldn’t afford to. It had to stir him. He had to be up for the day and ready for the job. Ready for the job, for to miss work meant the dread of being without money. And the dread of being without money meant the terrible despair of being without drink. He needed all he was getting. He had to make certain there would be no change.

  Kelly suddenly leant forward with a look of dawning apprehension: ‘Say, Mac, I was okay last night wasn’t I?’ he asked with a certain anxiety.

  Macauley handed him the cigarette he had just rolled for himself and began to roll another.

  ‘Well, wasn’t I?’

  ‘I managed you all right,’ Macauley said dryly, ‘but it would have been easier with a straitjacket.’

  Kelly relapsed on the pillow, an expression of sheepishness and concern on his face. ‘God, a man’s a mug,’ he said sincerely but without sincerity. There was no condemnation in the words. They were only a cover for his humiliation and an apology for his guilt.

  He saw Macauley get up, move round the bed, and hoist his swag.

  ‘Strike me pink, Mac, you’re not leaving?’

  ‘Yes, I’m on my way, Beauty.’

  ‘Hell, I thought you were going to put in a few days. I — ’

  ‘I’m going to give Eucla a burl. Want to get there as soon as I can.’

  Kelly leapt out of bed, looking worried and licking his lips; gesturing, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Spare me days, Mac, you’ve only just come. I mightn’t see you again for bloody years.’

  ‘Sure you will. Good luck.’

  He held out his hand, and Kelly took it in both of his, shaking it warmly and with an iron grip. He lost his subdued mood for a moment and, in a spasm of affability, bent down, clasped Buster’s shoulders and made to kiss her on the cheek. She turned her face away quickly with a light of fear and scorn in her eyes.

  ‘Go away. I don’t like you,’ she said.

  Kelly straightened up, giving a wry smile to hide his embarrassment. He saw the half-full bottle of gin on the table, and started towards it. ‘Mac, before you go.’

  Macauley shook his head. ‘It’s still too early for me,’ he said.

  He watched Kelly pour out a nip, his hands trembling slightly. Here it was again, the resumption of yesterday, the repeat performance. And maybe it would end with the same big climax. ‘How many bottles have you got of that stuff?’ Macauley asked.

  ‘Why?’ Kelly said unsuspectingly. ‘Just what’s in this, and I think another half-bottle here.’ He withdrew a bottle from the kerosene-box cupboard, and now there was an expression of slight dismay on his face as though he was expected to offer Macauley a drink to take with him.

  ‘Show me,’ Macauley said.

  He picked up the two bottles and walked quickly outside. He smashed them to smithereens on a stone. Kelly leapt to the door and the consternation was still on his face, but resolving itself now into a grief-struck rage. Macauley stopped him before he could do a thing or say a word.

  ‘If they were a mob at you, I’d do the same,’ Macauley said. ‘I’m not Barney Towsey talking, but I’m telling you to give it away. Take a pull on yourself. Get on your feet. I’ll be back again, and I want to see you right. I’m still your mate – but I’m leaving here bloody shocked that a man like you could come to this. You’re too good.’

  Kelly’s face was crumpled in pained astonishment. But Macauley lashed out ruthlessly, ‘I’ve met strangers and they’ve said to me: “Did you ever hear of a man named Beauty Kelly?” they’ve said. If they didn’t know you, if they never met you, they’d all heard of you. There wasn’t a man alive that didn’t look up to you once. The tailors fought for you to wear their clothes. The gutter wouldn’t look up to you now.’

  He shouldered his swag.

&nb
sp; ‘These tins. I was here the day she put them down in that border. Take a look at ’em some time as you pass by. Maybe you’ll see her kneeling there looking at you. It might help.’

  He drew in his breath and let it out in a slow sigh. His eyes stayed squarely on the man at the door, standing there with a dumb and stricken look, stony with anguish. Macauley softened his voice for the sake of entreaty.

  ‘Pick up your guts, Beauty,’ he said, and turned away.

  They arrived at Pokataroo in the mid-afternoon. It was the end of the line and it looked like the end of the world. The tracks stopped at the two stout buffers, and beyond them the grass took over. Cars pulled out from the terminus with their passengers for Collarenebri ten miles west. The laughter and chatter of friends and relatives died. The few people drifted away. An Abo sat humped on an oil drum, arms folded across his incurved chest, hands dug into the armpits.

  Macauley said to a fettler standing on the platform. ‘How does old Wigley rate these days – gorgonzola or otherwise?’

  A faint smile came on the weathered brown face. ‘Aw, take him right and you’ll get on.’

  He had three miles to go, south. He filled his tuckerbag, bought tobacco, and set off. The weather had been fine for a day there, with brief flashes of a watery sun, enough to dry out the ground a bit. Yet it wasn’t easy. After trudging for a mile Buster told him she felt dizzy. She looked pinched, and her breath came quickly in short reedy gasps. He picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.

  Macauley felt pretty good himself. The snooze in the train had refreshed him. He liked the confident feeling he had. This might be home on the pig’s back. The chance of getting a few quid together, a reunion with the old mates, a spell of work to break the monotony, good tucker, and plenty of it.

  Be extra good if it panned out.

  He heard the station dogs before he saw the homestead. It was a squat cream bungalow with a verandah all round and a high-pitched dull-red iron roof. A chain-wire fence enclosed it. It was laid out in paths and optimistic gardens. Macauley walked under a pergola and knocked on the side door. It was open but the secondary gauze door was closed to. The smell of warmth and food came out to him.

  A slim quarter-caste girl answered his knock. A good-looker: Macauley appraised her straight away. She didn’t miss his up and down look. And she didn’t turn her head away shyly. When he came back to her face her eyes were levelled at him and burning like black rubies. He changed the subject.

  Wigley wasn’t in, but Mr Drayton, the manager, was. Macauley told her to send out Drayton.

  The brooding sky was hastening the twilight, and he could smell the rain. Buster stood slumped beside him like a sick bird.

  Drayton came, a tall, spare elderly man with frosty hair and a white moustache. He had a habit of listening with his body slightly bent and his hands joined behind his back. His head moved from side to side like the head of a mantis. Macauley said his piece in a few words.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Drayton said, in the crackling voice of a much older man and clearing his throat every few seconds. ‘You see, Mr Wigley’s away; he’s gone to do some judging at a sheep show at Dubbo, and we don’t expect him back for a few more days. But I know he’s got all his men.’

  ‘There’s a chance one or two of them mightn’t turn up,’ Macauley pointed out.

  ‘Of course,’ the voice cracked on the notes again, ‘there’s always that chance, as you say.’ The head moved, eyes blinking in self-conference. Drayton was obviously a kind and conscientious man; and he was obviously pondering what decision Wigley himself would make in the circumstances. ‘Well,’ he said at long last, ‘there’s no harm in hanging round and seeing, I suppose, if you feel like doing that.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  Drayton looked up. ‘A bit of a wait, you know. We don’t start for another six days.’

  ‘That’s all right with me. Any objection to a man camping in the huts?’

  Drayton had to ponder again. ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said slowly. ‘You might as well be comfortable if you’re going to stay, mightn’t you? I certainly don’t mind, and I don’t think Mr Wigley would.’

  ‘Good.’ Macauley said.

  ‘I’ll get the key for you. Come round here.’

  Macauley and Buster followed him round to a small shed-like building full of stores and provisions. Drayton took a bunch of keys from the wall and gave him one off the ring.

  ‘You’d better take a lamp, too, to see your way around.’

  ‘Might be handy.’ Macauley nodded as he took the hurricane lantern.

  ‘Tucker?’

  ‘We’re right for that,’ Macauley said.

  ‘No wood down there yet,’ Drayton said in a considering pose. ‘What you’d find’d be wet anyway. You don’t want to be messing around lighting fires and cooking. I’ll get the cook to give you something to keep you going tonight.’

  Outside, he stood and pointed to the east. ‘Shed’s about half a mile straight through there. You’ll find straw in the wool room for your tick. The loading-stage door’s not locked. Just give it a push.’

  Buster sneezed again, and Drayton appeared to notice her for the first time. ‘She doesn’t say much, does she?’

  ‘She’s a bit off-colour with the cold, that’s all,’ Macauley said. ‘Otherwise she’s the greatest ear-basher ever God put breath in.’ He said it pleasantly. Drayton laughed. He took Macauley’s billy, and told him to wait at the side door.

  Ten minutes later the dark girl came out with a billy of hot tea, and a white oatmeal bag full of tinned foodstuffs. She handed them silently to Macauley. He accepted them silently. But as he took the billy she let her warm hand slide back over his fingers. It brought his eyes up to hers again. They were the eyes of a calf. But they were full of sin. She was smiling. She turned quickly and let the door slam after her.

  Macauley had to try seven doors before he found one the key would fit. It was a small room with a window. There were two beds with mattresses of meshed steel standing lengthways against each wall. Between them at the far end was a kerosene case propped on its side by four battens to form a table. The air was warm and dry.

  It would do him, Macauley thought. He put the lantern on the table, dumped his swag on the bed, and unrolled it. He emptied the oatmeal bag. There were tins of sausages, ham and chicken, corn beef, condensed milk; there was a jam tart wrapped in tissue paper. They had even thought to put in a tin-opener. Maybe they never heard of a man opening a tin with a sheath knife. He took tin plates, knives and forks, and the mugs and set them on the floor. He was as hungry as hell. He could eat a horse, tail and all.

  Suddenly he thought of Buster, and looked round. She was lying curled up on the bed, with her cheek pressed into the wire. Her eyes were closed.

  ‘Hey, don’t you want some tea?’

  There was no answer. Gently he shook her shoulder. The little body rolled unconsciously. Macauley stood back, thinking. Perhaps she was sicker than he thought. But she hadn’t complained. Not much. Not much at all. Kids soon let you know when their big toe aches. But maybe not all kids, it occurred to him. He was aware of the rebellion in his understanding, aware of his anxiety and his feelings about the damnable nuisance it was.

  He lifted her head and placed a folded towel under it. He covered her with a blanket. Then he took two striped ticks and went across to the shed fifty yards away and filled them with straw. He hauled them back one on each shoulder like bloated carcasses. He put a knot in the end of one. He’d run his together later with needle and cotton.

  In five minutes he had her lying on the warm stack, covered to the neck with a blanket, and the light shaded from her eyes. She had submitted to the change with a few irritable whimpers, her eyes all the time fastened in heavy sleep.

  Macauley felt the cold currents of air on his face. He saw the flame waver in the lamp. He heard the sudden seizure in the trees – they mopped air. Already the lilt of the storm was in them. At the d
oor he stood thrust against the blow, watching the darkness coming, hearing the blatter of tin on the cookhouse roof, seeing the lone bird wallowing in the murky sky. There was the toowomba, the low deep toowomba of thunder.

  Rain, bloody rain; was there no end to it? Get down on your knees and cry your heart out for it and the sun blazed in your eyes. Weep for the sun and the heavens poured. In the cruelty of the drought men poured corn into the sapling troughs, running along the ground for hundreds of yards, and the starved sheep came when they saw the men, came like fowls running to the hand that spreads them grain: came at their stiff-legged trot, wobbly, their sides sunken in. The strongest ran in the lead but the others could not keep his pace. Their forelegs buckled and they fell, threshing and staggering up, struggling along with heaving ribs. The lambs did not rise. Only their eyes moved when you got near them, and spasmodically, their hind legs. Kill them before they died of weakness. The tree-loppers went up the trees and the emaciated creatures waited below for the boughs to fall. As they fell the animals attacked them, chewing in a frenzy. It was easier to give them the faces and the forms of men. It was easy to hate and be bitter. No rain.

  They floundered in the bogs. They were caught in the washways. They floated down the swollen creeks like kapok bundles. They dotted the paddocks like hummocks of snow, chilled by the wet and the cold, dead and dying. Too much rain.

  No rain at the right time, too much at the wrong.

  Macauley forced the door shut. He ate a meal out of a tin with bread and butter. He drank the lukewarm tea. He made up his bed and lay on it. He wished the tick were filled with gumleaves. There was nothing better. Straw had a stink, and it broke up and the fluff irritated your nose. It made you spit grey phlegm. It was only a personal distaste, a molehill, but he seemed to be magnifying it into a mountain. He caught himself in a guilty apperception. What the hell was the matter with him? Doing all this grouching and bitching: for God’s sake what was he running in – the old maid’s handicap? That feeling he had to grumble, that faint temptation to lose heart and spirit – they annoyed him. He never grumbled. He never lost heart.