The Shiralee

by D'Arcy Niland

  It had all started when he had taken on the kid: since the big act that had revolutionised his life.

  He glanced across at her, and his eye fell on the monstrosity she called Gooby, lying on the floor under the bed. He looked at it for five minutes. Testily he got out and jammed it down under the blanket with her, only its head sticking out in a google-eyed stare. He eased the nap away from her face so that she might breathe more freely. He blew out the lamp and tried hard to go to sleep. The wind howled round the building, determined to wrench it from its foundations. Then it dropped and the rain sprinkled like pebbles on the roof.

  The next day Macauley had a look round, glad to get out of the room and stretch his legs. The rain fell gently. He walked over to the cookhouse. The cook room was locked, but the kitchen door was only secured by a slip bolt. He walked round on the wooden floor, casting his eye over the long bench, the brick oven, the open fireplace with the beards of soot on the black hooks hanging from the rail. He went into the mess-room, with its long table, white as soap, and the forms against its sides. There was a notice on the wall from last year; it was scribbled in pencil and headed up: Craphouse Duties. It gave a list of men’s names and their rostered days. It ended up with the injunction in snaggled capitals: Kangarooing it Not Allowed. And in smaller letters: Remember others have to sit where you shat. The notice was signed by the shearers’ rep.

  Chalked on a weatherboard slab at the far end of the room was an inscription: Fang Davis shore here in ’37. Underneath it was a postscript added by some other hand: Yes, the moaning bastard.

  Macauley knew Fang Davis. He was never done grizzling. If it wasn’t the weather it was the sheep. If it wasn’t the sheep it was the tucker, if not the tucker the accommodation. He had a mean, pinched-up, achy face, and went about with his hat brim cocked up at the back and a hand to his stomach as though he never felt too good. His day was an ordeal of jealousy and frustration. He was never satisfied with his tally. He would have done better only, he whinged, his back ached, he jinked his wrist, or his corns gave him gyp.

  The recollection made Macauley laugh impulsively.

  He went outside and surveyed the scene. Everything was nice and compact. A small two-room dwelling twenty yards from the cookhouse was the classer’s and expert’s quarters. The shed itself stood on a slight rise. He inspected it inside, the long board, the wool room, the empty bins, the slatted tables, the Ferrier press. The empty pens smelled of ammonia. Grass grew in the chutes. Soon the earth there would be trampled bare. Everything was ready to go.

  He walked down the slope. The first huts were the usual barrack-like building, three rooms adjoining and a door to each. They were walled, roofed, and, he guessed, partitioned with corrugated iron. They were comparatively new. The second huts were only an improvisation. The building was an old house, probably once the cottage of a boundary rider; it stood four-square like a box and was divided into four separate rooms. Macauley walked right round it, peering through the dusty, cobwebbed windows. In the room diagonally opposite the one he was occupying the old fireplace still stood in what once must have been the dining room: or the kitchen, most likely, he thought. The brick chimney stood intact except where it had crumbled away at the lip.

  Macauley went back into his room. Buster was still asleep the way he had left her. Her face was scarlet. From time to time a cough bubbled in her chest, racking her body for the few moments it lasted. He roused her gently, raised her on his arm and dosed her with eucalyptus. He rubbed her back and chest, massaging the medicament well into the flesh. She seemed to breathe more easily, quickly resuming the stuporous sleep.

  In the afternoon Macauley went up to the station. The cook was a large woman with a blobby face and a pile of rufous hair going pink instead of grey. She listened indifferently, caught in the act of holding up the ends of her apron. All Macauley wanted, he said, was a bit of gravy beef; whatever she could spare. She dawdled off, and returned with a small newspaper parcel. She handed it to him without a word and turned away.

  Macauley saw the quarter-caste girl coming out of the henhouse with a bowl of eggs. He walked down there. She appeared not to notice him as she picked her way through the sludgy churn of the fowlyard to the gate. She was wearing a green cape with a hood thrown over her shoulders.

  ‘Hey, how about a chook for tea?’

  ‘You see Mr Drayton ’bout that,’ she answered without looking up.

  Macauley stood at the gate, watching her come up, watching her unlatch it. The hood had fallen back and the raindrops were caught in her jet hair. They spotted the velvet texture of her skin like tiny beads of perspiration. As Abos went, Macauley thought, she was a beautiful girl.

  He pulled the gate back for her.

  ‘I like chicken,’ he said.

  She darted him a swift look from her piercing black eyes – a wicked and challenging look. Then she giggled and ran towards the house, and he looked after her spindly legs. No matter what else they had or where they had it, they never got away from those pipey shanks.

  Macauley cut the meat up fine into the billycan, added enough water to cover it and sat it on the hob to soak for an hour. He raked up enough wood here and there to make a fire and keep it going. He mixed in several small stones to absorb the heat and complement the coals. Then he put the soup on to simmer. On the rich extract he fed Buster for that day and the next, spooning it into her mouth while she sat propped up, glazy-eyed, and interested in nothing.

  By the middle of that second day Macauley was beginning to feel the monotony. The strain of watching vainly for some improvement in the child only added to the pall. The drifting rain, the gloom, the wet world and the smell of damp about everything – he was sick to death of it all. The growth was black on his face; his eyes had a stormy look.

  He felt the restlessness ease in him when he saw Drayton riding down from the shed. He reined in his horse at the door. He wore a black glistening oilskin. His face was pink and healthy.

  ‘How’re you putting it in?’

  Macauley nodded that all was well. He shifted his shoulder against the other side of the doorway.

  ‘Wigley not back yet?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow. He rang up this morning. I told him you were here.’

  ‘What’s he say?’

  ‘He thought it was worthwhile.’

  ‘Good.’

  Buster coughed, a cough that seemed to be catching chokingly at her breath. It ended with a querulous whimpering that faded away. Drayton leant forward over the horse’s head and peered inside the hut, concern on his face.

  ‘Is she down to it?’

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Macauley said. He didn’t like Drayton’s pondering expression.

  ‘It takes it out of them, doesn’t it?’ the elderly man said with a mixture of sympathy and worry. ‘Is there anything you want? Medicine? Tucker?’

  ‘I might pick up a bit more scran tomorrow if it’s okay. Something with blood in it. Some of the cookhouse pots would be handy too, if you’ll let me have the pantry key. I’ll look after it.’

  Drayton nodded. ‘I’ll probably be back this way later. If not, in the morning.’

  ‘Okay. I could do with something to read, too.’

  Drayton came back about half past four, with a bundle of papers and magazines and a chunk of freshly killed beef. He left the key and told Macauley he could have the run of the cookhouse. Then he was gone. Macauley promised himself he would remember Drayton in his will, and moodily set about preparing another meal: first going through the ritual of feeding and rubbing Buster and then eating, himself.

  He lay on his bunk flipping the pages of the magazines. But for some reason he couldn’t concentrate. There was a seemingly causeless distraction in him. He sat up and rolled a cigarette. He took up a paper. Put it down. He stretched out. He got up and went to the door. His nerves were on edge. He felt keyed up, in a wrath of boredom, indecision and vindictiveness.

  He went over to the cookhouse. The fir
e glowed slowly under the bubbling camp oven. He turned the meat over and replaced the lid. He threw a few more chips on, boiled the billy, and made a mug of tea. The rain was still falling, the wind blowing in swishing gusts. He sat on the box by the hob, holding the palms of his hands outwards against the trembling fire. He sat in a silence of brooding.

  He was like that when the knock came on the open door. He looked sideways sharply, half rising, and he saw the dark girl there, still in the green cape and hood, the lantern at her side. He walked over to the door, surprised and suspicious. He looked down at her face. He could smell a fragrance about her he hadn’t smelled before.

  ‘I brought these,’ she said quickly. ‘Mr Drayton told me.’

  He took the magazines and glanced up to meet the enticing question in her eyes. It was not on her face. Her face was sober and virtuous. He felt his senses tangling with hers like barbs in a net. They quietened his voice.

  ‘Drayton didn’t send you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  She touched the hood and it fell back. There was a poppy-red ribbon tied in her hair. He felt the ravening hunger eating through his control.

  ‘Drayton was here today. He brought me enough reading to last a year. He wouldn’t send you with more. You came off your own bat.’

  There was no deceit on her face now: the expression accorded with that in her eyes.

  ‘Why did you come?’ Macauley teased the passion surging in him.

  ‘You don’t like me,’ she said. ‘I go away.’

  ‘Was it for this?’

  He threw his arms about her, crushing her against his desperate body, twisting his lips on her mouth, dragging her back with him into the room. He sank down with her, and her lithe nimbleness excited him still more: he felt her strength repelling him, and in the fury of his craving it only tantalised the power he wanted to spend on her; he had a momentary fear that she was opposing him, that there was antagonism. And then it was gone. It was gone with the softness and pliancy that came in her; she relaxed like a kitten with her claws in him; he saw the goading glee on her face in the firelight, the parted lips, the glittering eyes. All the rage of his yearning and resentment was dynamite.

  He crawled away, and sat on the box with his head in his hands. When he felt fingers caressing his hair he didn’t look up.

  ‘Am I nice?’ she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘All the men say I’m nice. White men, nice men like you. I don’t let black trash touch me. I spit on them.’ She added with venom, ‘They don’t belong to me.’

  She uttered a soft trill of laughter. ‘Men are strong like bullocks, and rough; then they are like little lambs. It’s funny.’

  ‘Better go home,’ Macauley said.

  ‘I like you. You like me?’

  ‘Go home now.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  ‘Now!’

  ‘No!’ She said it petulantly.

  He lifted his head with a violent motion. ‘You black bastard, do what I tell you! Get home. Get to hell out of here.’ He hauled her up, and pushed her stumbling to the door. ‘Get away and leave me alone.’

  She picked up the lantern and ran away without a word, frightened of the menace in him.

  Macauley went down on his haunches. Absently, he fluffed the ashes over the coals until there was only a grey heap, a core of life for the morning. He sauntered over to the room. He didn’t light the lantern. He put his face close to that of the sleeping child. He could feel the heat from the flesh, like a glow on his cheek. She didn’t seem to be any hotter. Her breathing was no more irregular.

  He lay on his back, staring into the darkness, fuming with the abjection in him; bristling to meet the arguments and accusations of conscience, but finding them unanswerable and incontestable. He hated the weakness that had let him down. He hated the ignominy of capitulating to a harlot, and a black one at that. Macauley, the gin jockey, they could say. The black velvet for Macauley; he can’t get the white satin, poor sod. He hated the rebuking contrasts: this going on here and that going on over there.

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ he said aloud.

  The next day, in the afternoon, Macauley was standing at the cookhouse door when he saw a little figure of a man coming across the paddock from the north. Macauley squinted to see if he knew him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t place the busy little waddle of a walk. He waited.

  ‘Good day,’ he said as the stranger came up.

  ‘How’s she going?’

  Macauley noticed the little roll, the coat pulled together with three odd buttons, the white-spotted blue cravat twisted round the neck and filling the space between the lapels. He also noticed that the tuckerbag was as long and narrow as a folded umbrella.

  ‘Cripes, this floggin’ rain’d make you cry, wouldn’t it? Can’t the duddy weather office give us a bit of a change?’

  ‘Think it’s on its way out now,’ Macauley said, scanning the light drizzle. ‘Feel like a mug of brew? I’ve got her swinging.’

  The little man took off his pork-pie hat and slapped it against his knee. His face was as small as a child’s, pale and wrinkled like a withered apple. The eyes looked like currants.

  ‘Come far?’

  ‘Caidmurra.’

  ‘On your pat?’

  ‘I had a mate, but he got himself pinched. And just quietly I been a box o’birds ever since.’

  ‘Booze?’

  ‘No, the silly cow, makin’ up to the tabbies and that. He’d go round to the kitchen for a handout, and if there was no blokes about, he’d come the smoodge to the women for a bit of a love-up. Mad bee. It was gettin’ me down. I tell you.’

  ‘He was looking for trouble,’ Macauley said.

  ‘I always knew he was up to his capers when he was a long time away. When he come back I’d dress him down something woeful. And he’d eat me, you know. Big enough to hold an elephant out, he was. But he’d only hang his head and look unhappy. And it used to make me feel like a real low heel, the way he looked, and that. You know?’

  Macauley drank his tea, not interested, but listening, glad of someone’s company.

  ‘I wanted like billy-o to shake him off, but I didn’t know how. Anyway, he gets up to his tricks again, after promisin’ me he won’t, and this time he draws a heavyweight. She clocks him with a fryin’ pan or something, raisin’ a lump on his scone like an egg. And she puts him in. A week later a john-hop picks us up on the road and takes him off me. And you know what he does when they take him off me? He cries. Just like a big boob.’

  ‘What’d he get?’ Macauley asked.

  ‘I dunno. The case hasn’t come up yet. But he’ll do a stretch, poor silly bee. Seven years me and him were together, and I often think to meself how I stuck it out. Dinkum. That tea’s all right. I think I’ll double up. What’s your line?’

  Macauley told him who he was and what he was doing there. They talked. The little man’s name was McCausland, but he was better known as Polka Dot, a title probably inspired by the cravat round his neck which had been there so long it would have required a surgical operation to remove it. Polka Dot never swore. He said that a man could express himself without swear words: the continual use of them only showed that a man had no education. He found that he could get all the emphasis he needed with euphemisms. He thought he might as well wait, too, for the shearing to start, but he wasn’t particular whether he got a job. Still, it was a chance to loaf and fatten up, he said, and shouldn’t be thrown away.

  ‘I’ll go down and see the head serang,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it on him to let me bunk up in one of the huts like you. I got to get some tucker, too. I got a bit o’ meat there, but she’s gone funny.’

  ‘Listen,’ Macauley said, the thought just occurring to him. ‘While you’re down there find out if there’s anybody going into Colly. If there is ask ’em if they’d call in at the post office and see if there’s any mail there for me.’

  ‘Righto, mate,’ Polka chirru
ped. He turned at the door. ‘What’s this Drayton like? I know Wigley, and he might have a bit of the boss about him, but he’s all right. I don’t know Drayton.’

  ‘He’ll put you in mind of your mother,’ Macauley told him with a faint smile.

  ‘Silver hair and a heart of gold, eh?’ Polka laughed. ‘I get it.’ He went off with the empty sugar bag under his arm.

  It was an hour before he returned. He was whistling. Macauley had just finished attending to Buster when he poked his head round the door. He stepped inside, his eyes twinkling as he held up a key in one hand, and the tuckerbag, like a fat rabbit, in the other. He stepped across to the bed, and said, ‘Is this the little titter?’

  Macauley hadn’t told him about Buster. He looked at Polka. But Polka was still looking down at Buster and touching her nose with an amiable wiggling finger. His next words explained the source of his knowledge.

  ‘I told Drayton I’d already met you, but I didn’t know what he was talking about when he said how is the little girl. I thought he musta mistook me for a mother of ten, or something.’ He chuckled.

  ‘How’d he say it?’ Macauley said.

  ‘Just asked.’ Polka pulled a face at Buster. Buster looked at him gravely with eyes as big as saucers in the thin, burning face. Polka tried again, tipping his hat forward and giving it a life of its own on his crawling scalp. He saw a faint tremulous smile creep into the lips and melt away. He chuckled with pleasure.

  Macauley idly rolled a cigarette, sensitive to a vague premonitory feeling.

  ‘Not like that narrow-gutted mate of mine, Hinchey,’ Polka said. ‘When he got crook and that way you couldn’t get a smile out of him for love or money. Wet-nurse him all the time. Polka, where are you? Where’s me strides? Hand me that mug. Help me up. I want this. I want that – all the duddy time. Struth, I was wore out.’ Even the memory seemed to give him a momentary look of exhaustion. Then he added with an emphatic cry, ‘And he was a grown man, not a bit of a kid.’

  ‘What about the mail?’

  ‘Aw, yeah. Drayton’s going in himself tomorrow,’ he said. ‘In the mornin’.’