Macauley put the cork back in the eucalyptus bottle, and picked up the pint still with a little broth left in it. He glanced at Buster. Her eyelids were drooping. She turned over on her side and dropped off, embracing Gooby.
Polka lowered his voice. ‘Don’t look too good, does she?’
‘She hasn’t got any worse,’ Macauley said. He said it with a slight truculence that he couldn’t help. Polka lifted his eyebrows wonderingly, but instinct told him to say no more.
They went outside.
‘That’s where I am,’ Polka said, pointing to the first row of huts. ‘Last room this end.’
‘Among the silvertails, eh?’ Macauley bantered.
Polka didn’t catch on for a moment. Then he saw the contrast between the new and the old building where Macauley was camped, and he laughed. ‘Somebody thinks I’m a bit of all right, anyway,’ he followed up the jocose theme. ‘That boong piece at the station – you had your peepers on her yet?’
Macauley looked at the twinkling currant eyes without a flicker in his own. ‘I’ve seen her,’ he remarked.
‘Should have seen the way she looked at me,’ Polka grinned. ‘Made me feel goosey all over. The real come-on, it was if’ – and the grin widened – ‘me memory serves me right. Strike me pink, I thought to meself, what have I got she can’t get elsewhere.’ He laughed.
‘Ah, you’re a dirty old man,’ Macauley said, affecting a casual humour to hide his real feelings.
‘Well, I’ll go and dress for dinner, m’lord.’ Polka bowed and walked off.
Macauley didn’t go to sleep for a long time that night. At daylight Buster’s coughing woke him. He looked across with a fagged bleariness at the small lump under the blankets bouncing with the hacking violence exploding within her body. He sprang out of bed, and for a moment watched the agitation, the face bursting and shuddering with the choking paroxysms, the throat gulping, the nostrils flaring and snorting, the tongue protruding from the mouth. Then he turned the child on her side, and waited for the coughing to ease itself away in panting spasms and a thin, sick lugubrious whine. He touched the hot brow. He listened and he heard the purring chest, the wheezy breathing.
He sat on the bed, twisting his hands, running them through his hair. He felt a fury for the growing helplessness in him. The strengthening suspicion of defeat maddened him. Oppression tried to settle over him but his ferocious nerves jarred at its touch and repelled it.
He got through the morning. At dinnertime the rain drifted away, and it was good to feel the sun again – but there was no warmth in it, only colour. The sky was dark blue, and clean as a new billycan.
Towards evening, with the chill already in the air, Wigley and Drayton rode down from the station. Macauley watched them dismount and go into the shed. He waited for them to come out. They rode casually down to the first huts, veered and came round by the cookhouse. Macauley stayed at the door of his hut, leaning against the frame, smoking, until they approached him. He nodded.
‘Everything all right?’ Wigley asked peremptorily. He was a stocky man in riding breeches, fawn sports coat, and grey tweed hat with a drooping brim. He had a hawky face with a high colour and eyes like slits of blue crystal, set in a web of fine lines. They were hard but not unkind. Macauley did not fail to notice the subdued appearance of Drayton.
Wigley glanced in the room, then at Macaulay. ‘I understand you’ve got a sick kiddy there. How is she?’
‘Not the best,’ Macauley said, feeling his way. ‘But I’ll get her right.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know – just a helluva cold.’
‘Sounds like ’flu to me from what Drayton says.’ The sternness of Wigley’s gaze made the words seem stern, as much as did the officious and bumptious manner. ‘You know we start shearing here next week, and I don’t want any hold-up?’
‘What hold-up could there be?’
‘Sickness.’ Wigley shot the word out. ‘I don’t want men going down with ’flu. Off work. Short-handed. All the rest of it. I don’t want the trouble.’
‘I’ll have her over it before then.’ Macauley duelled.
‘I’m sorry,’ Wigley said shaking his head firmly, ‘but I can’t let you stay here. I don’t even want the risk of it. Why, you know what shearers are. They’ve only got to know there’s sickness here and they’d make a stink about it and refuse to come. And you couldn’t blame them. It’s not a fair thing to ask a man to subject himself to the risk, to come to a place where he knows a sick person to be. You’d think twice about it yourself.’
‘She’ll be right by then,’ Macauley insisted.
‘Right or not right, there’s still a danger of infection. I don’t want it. You’ll have to go.’ He swung off the horse. ‘Where is the child?’
Macauley stood back as Wigley stepped into the room. He stayed at the door, watching Wigley inspect the child. He turned as Drayton called his name, and saw the letter in his outstretched hand.
‘I just remembered I had it,’ Drayton said, with his look of pondering sympathy.
Macauley took the letter and his eyes snapped open and narrowed. The old address was in the handwriting of his wife. That was all he had time for. Wigley’s feet clattered on the floorboards. His face, six inches from Macauley’s, was like a beetroot. ‘You should have had that child in hospital days ago!’ he rapped. ‘I’ll make arrangements to have her taken there straight away.’
He grabbed the reins of his horse from Drayton’s hands.
‘You’ll do nothing of the bloody kind,’ Macauley said, and the way he said it arrested Wigley in the act of putting one foot in the stirrup-iron. He stood poised, scrutinising the glaring eyes, full of quick heat, and the bearded face and the shaggy head. He was not used to being spoken to that way, but he was a man who knew something of men, and he thought he understood Macauley. He mounted his horse, and leant forward over the animal’s neck.
‘What are you getting tough about?’
‘Nobody’s getting tough,’ Macauley said, the eyes softening in their fiery intensity, but not shifting from Wigley’s face.
‘I think you’d be wise to do what Mr Wigley says,’ Drayton put in nervously, nodding his head with a kindly persuasiveness.
‘Why not, man?’ Wigley followed up. ‘That child is sicker than you think. What’s your objection?’
‘Look, Wigley,’ Macauley said, ‘you’ve told me to get out.’
‘I’ve told you I can’t have you here.’
‘Same thing.’
Wigley galloped ahead. ‘And if you were a reasonable man you’d see my point.’
‘You want to send my kid to hospital.’
‘Good God, man, where’s your complaint there? It won’t cost you anything. I’ll bear all the expense. I can’t be any fairer than that, can I?’
‘It’s an offer you ought to accept with gratitude,’ Drayton encouraged with a pleading expression.
Macauley ignored him, still looking at Wigley.
‘You know how I’m placed,’ he said quietly. ‘Yet you tell me to get out. You’re doing me a bad turn. Well, let it stay at that.’
‘You don’t think I like doing it, do you?’ Wigley demanded.
‘Let it stay at that,’ Macauley said. ‘Don’t try to buy it back with a favour.’
‘What on earth — ’
‘Just so you can square off. Just so you can be a good feller with me and a good feller with yourself.’
‘You’re a bloody fool!’ exploded Wigley. ‘What chance have you got of getting away from here with that child? I’m trying to help you.’
‘So the favour’s all for you, then? It’s not for me after all. Look, Wigley, the only one you’re helping,’ Macauley told him bluntly, ‘is yourself. You can’t wait to get rid of us. The quicker the better. You’ve got the shivery-shakes. You’re away ahead of yourself, with a shedful of sick men and the pens full of jumbucks waiting to be shorn, and thousands to come, and you losing dough by the minute;
down to your last ten thousand, and wondering where the next feed’s coming from. It hasn’t happened. But the panic you’re in has made it happen already.’
Wigley was fuming, his lips compressed and quivering, his face a choleric red.
‘I ought to get off this horse and thrash you for that. You’re an insulting ungrateful swine. You haven’t got the breeding of a dog.’
Macauley’s eyes glinted, but he was perfectly composed.
‘The sheep, the sheds, the men, the dough, even the ’flu germs – they’ll all be here, Wigley, when you and me are dead and gone.’
Wigley sprang off his horse. Macauley didn’t move from the doorway. Easily, he blocked the two wild haymakers, and caught Wigley’s arms by the wrists. ‘Don’t do anything you might be ashamed of later, Mr Wigley.’ He took his big hands off the other’s wrists, and Wigley jerked himself away.
‘If you’re not off this place by tomorrow I’ll get the police to shift you.’
‘Never mind the threats,’ Macauley said. ‘I’ll be gone. I bear you no hard feelings. I know your form. I just wanted you to know that I know it.’
Drayton, white and trembling, shaking his head with regret of the whole unpleasant incident and obviously feeling some guilt for his own part in it, told Macauley in a quavering voice that he ought to be ashamed of himself for his insolence and stupidity. He leant over to help Wigley onto his horse, but Wigley brushed his arm aside, mounted, and cantered away, with Drayton following anxiously in a jog-trot.
Polka Dot edged round the side of the house and waddled up. He looked at Macauley as though he were seeing him in a new light. ‘I heard the whole show from lights out to God Save The King. Cripes you tossed him, didn’t you? Neat as sixpence.’
‘How’s the time?’ Macauley said.
‘She must be gettin’ onto six. Can you do a feed?’
‘I can eat.’
‘Yeah, no doubt about you, you made him look meaner than catcrap. Well, I’ll go and get her ready.’
‘Okay. I’ll be over soon.’
Macauley sat on his bunk and pulled the letter from his pocket. He looked at it for a minute, breathing hard; then he opened it. He felt the ends of his fingers tingle as he read. It started off without any preliminaries.
I hope this finds you, because I want you to know a few things. You thought I’d come crawling after you for the kid, didn’t you? You thought I couldn’t get along without her. Fat lot you knew, you bastard. The laugh might have been on your face that night, but it’s on mine now. You have a turn with her and see how you get on. See how she gets on your nerves for a change. Don’t come back here. I don’t want to see either of you again. You ruined my life, but thank God a good man has come into it now. You hurt Donny, you broke his jaw and smashed his ribs and he could go you through the court, but he’s too big a man for that. He’s a gentleman compared to you. He’s kind and thoughtful, not like you. You’re nothing but a selfish brute, and you always will be. I wasn’t right in the head when I married you. Donny and me will be married just as soon as the divorce is through. I can nail you for desertion, and that’s what I’m going to do. But don’t think I’m finished with you yet. I’m not. One day I’m going to get you if it’s the last thing I do. You mongrel. I hope you die.
M.
That was the only signature. Macauley read the letter through again, feeling the impact of loathing and vindictiveness in the words. He looked at the postmark on the envelope. The letter had been posted four months ago, two months after he had taken Buster. But it may have been written sooner, written to relieve a heart flooded with hatred and humiliation, set aside in a drawer for its acrimony to mature, nursed in a handbag like a malevolent vial. Until it was finally sent to its victim.
Slowly he crumpled the paper and rolled it into a ball between his palms. He felt the cold creep round his ankles and into his fingers. He heard the slight querulous whimpering of the child in fugitive sleep. The dark came down, sifting into the room.
‘Hey, Mac!’ Polka called from the cookhouse. ‘Come on, mate, and feed your face.’
Macauley went over. He flipped the paper ball into the fire with a grimace of bitter contempt. There was a storm in his head. Polka was all for talking about the set-to, but Macauley told him tersely to put a sock in it. Polka looked taken aback for a moment, but affably agreed, saying he knew a lot more tunes. He chattered away, aware of Macauley’s inner turmoil, and doing his best to crust it over with levity. But even his good humour was blunted by Macauley’s moody silence and laconic replies; and in a little while his enthusiastic crusade dwindled to a few simple platitudes about rain and wool and the state of the country.
He went outside, and came back five minutes later, rubbing his hands and scrooging his shoulders. ‘By cripes,’ he remarked with a shiver in his voice, ‘a man’ll want all the feathers on the bed tonight.’
He stood on the hob with his back to the fire, watching Macauley rolling a cigarette.
‘Are you fair dinkum about pushin’ off tomorrow, Mac?’
‘You heard me tell him,’ Macauley said, without looking up.
‘Yeah, I know – but I mean, with the kid and that …’ Macauley seemed to be reflecting and Polka went on, ‘I reckon you ought to stick it out. What could Wigley do? He’s not that hard, anyway, not underneath.’
‘I’ll eat grass first,’ Macauley said.
Polka looked glum. He rolled himself a match-thin cigarette, a racehorse, and tucked the ends in thoughtfully.
‘Well, it’s tough luck, that’s all I can say. But nobody’s fault.’
‘It’s somebody’s fault,’ Macauley said.
‘Aw, crimey, Mac, nobody can help gettin’ crook. I know how you feel, but what can you do? Like that mate of mine, Hinchey. He was always doin’ somethin’ or gettin’ crook at the wrong time and that. I coulda kicked him in the ask-no-questions a dozen times a day, but it wouldn’t have done any good.’
Macauley stood up. ‘I need wood. All I can get. See what you can rake together for me, will you, Polka?’
He walked back to the hut in a ferment of antagonism. He took a tomahawk from his swag, stuck the handle through his belt, and carried the kerosene-box table round to the room with the fireplace. He rammed his shoulder against the door. The lock tore away from the splintered woodwork and the door crashed open. He threw the box into the room.
He walked away into the freezing darkness. The cold wind cut into his bones. It seemed to come off the ice of the stars, glinting frostily in the cold remoteness of space. Macauley couldn’t help feeling that matters were getting to a stage where they were becoming comical. Fate was certainly laying in the boot; piling it on. It was the last straw when a man had to go searching for fuel, when in a few days there would be a wood-stack outside the door that a pole vaulter couldn’t jump over.
But he was a crafty man who knew where to look without wasting time. He cut away the dry bark from the leaning sides of trees and the underparts of logs. He split the dry wood away. Splintered wood he got in plenty from the openings of hollow rotten logs. In an old green tree, hollow from the ground for some distance up there was a thick debris of leaves and twigs that had blown in there and accumulated with time. He took it all. He armed himself with a few solid wet stumps and thick junks and carried all back to the hut in two trips. Polka had collected half a tubful of chips, wet and dry from the woodheap, several scantlings from round the shed, and had thrown in a couple of kerosene cases from his room.
‘By cripes, she’s cold, ain’t she?’ Polka shivered.
Macauley built the fire carefully with the wet and dry wood and plenty of old newspapers and magazines screwed into wads. He poured some kerosene over the pyre from the hurricane lantern. He set it alight and fanned it. The flames crept up, tasting the wet wood and retreating into thick crawling smoke. He worked over it, hearing the struggling crackle, the spitting, sizzling, and hissing of the drenched sticks.
Then he had the fire established, a
nd when it had warmed the room, driving out the chill, he went back to his room. He placed Buster on his bunk while he carried the bedding round and threw it on a mattress along the wall opposite the fireplace. He went back and wrapped her up and brought her out. She was dreeing mournfully. The night air caught at her throat and brought on an attack of coughing. He felt the humid heat of her head against his cheek, the steamy warmth of her body.
‘You think it’ll work?’ Polka asked.
‘There’s a chance,’ Macauley said, not pausing for a minute. ‘If I can knock that fever and congestion it’ll help.’
He poured eucalyptus into his palm and rubbed Buster’s back, chest, and throat. Her flesh was a burning pink, laced with blue veins. It was tight on her chest and the chest was like a frail ridgy basket. Her shoulder blades stuck up like the bones of a trussed fowl. Her spine was a rod of blunt discs.
Macauley rolled the thick pads of his hands up and down. She cried out and twisted. He used the whole bottle of eucalyptus. He rubbed his hands dry with each application. Buster burst into moaning screeching sobs with the agony. Her squalling was nerve-racking. Polka stood with a look of suffering on his face. Macauley didn’t falter. His face was set like stone. He rubbed the flesh raw. Then he was finished. He wrapped up the tortured bundle like a parcel and left her to whimper herself to sleep.
‘Why don’t you hit the sack, mate?’ He said to Polka. ‘I’ll be up all night, and I don’t feel like talking.’
Polka took the hint, tucked his neck into his coat collar, and braved the frigid air.
Macauley stoked the fire and threw on more wood. It was the length of the fireplace and two feet high, a great roaring shock of flame that tore up the chimney and sat like the red wick of a giant candle on the top, sparks flying from it as from the streaming tail of a comet. It was so bright it lit up every corner with a furious glow that scarcely cast a shadow. The temperature mounted. In a little while Macauley couldn’t get near the fire without shielding his eyes with his hands and smelling the scorch of his clothes.
The room was an oven. Inside the blankets the child cooked. He watched the sweat break on her face and run down it in rills. The towel that pillowed her head became a sodden pulp. His own clothes hung like a dishcloth. He stripped down to his underpants. When he went to the door and stood on the step the night air hit him like a douche of icy water. He left the door ajar and rammed open the window a little.
The Shiralee Page 13
