She rocked with mirth, and Sweeney grinned to see her. That was the way it was with them.
Macauley and Buster were given a balcony room. It was clean and neat. Bella told him any dirty duds he had to sling them out; the black girl would be round in the morning to do the washing.
Buster said as she bounced on the bed, ‘I like this place.’
‘Well, don’t smash the mattress.’
‘Are we going to live here now?’
‘For a little while.’
He looked at her: pale and emaciated as she was, and still with the cough, it was hard to believe that it was the same child who looked like death only the night before. He had a sense of gratified pleasure in his success, not so much because he had put her on her feet as because he had bested his anxiety and overthrown what had seemed like certain defeat. And from that feeling he drew much confidence and hope: whether illusory or not, he could sense a turn in his fortunes, a run of good luck for a change. Striking the ride through from Collarenebri so quickly portended to it; so did the welcome he had received here and the cushy prospect of staying for a few weeks, which he told himself truthfully was for the sole purpose of getting Buster completely well and giving him the opportunity to plan his future – and hers. He had resolved that they should split up. What he would do with her he had yet to work out.
He felt even more certain that he was right about his lucky streak coming right way up when he walked down the town next morning and chanced on a job as a builder’s labourer. He had done the work before among the many other odds and sods in his catalogue of toil. The contractor’s name was Varley, an easygoing man who had a good name as a boss. He took a fancy to Macauley, especially after he saw the way he worked on the job. He was a laconic man who didn’t pay compliments every day of the week but he said to Macauley, ‘What I like about you is your conscientiousness.’
‘It’s your money. You want to see something for it. I’m not doing any more than I’m being paid for.’
‘That’s not it. You’re doing as much as you’re being paid for.’
Macauley shrugged. ‘The boss who doesn’t stand over a man like a gyppo taskmaster gets more out of me,’ he said.
‘I wish others felt the same way,’ answered Varley, with a sigh.
This great institution of labour could be a tough proposition sometimes, Macaulay thought. Hammer one nail in a piece of timber and the boss thought you were a slacker. Hammer two, and your mates slurred you as a crawler. But it depended on the mates. Safest way out was to work for yourself, and not everybody could do that. Even then a man had his troubles. He liked the mates on the job, and they liked him. What Varley thought about them was his own business.
That first day Macauley had a job getting Buster to stay behind. Bella had to use her impressive authority of blandishment and affection with the child. She told her she had to stay in bed and she insisted on keeping her there. When Macauley returned in the evening Buster greeted him with joyful enthusiasm that wouldn’t be quelled. He learned that she had been asking all day for him, asking where he was and when he was coming back; getting out of bed from time to time and looking up and down the street from the balcony.
‘You were away a long time,’ she chided him.
‘I was working,’ Macauley said.
Luke Sweeney knocked and came in. He nodded in Buster’s direction. ‘I suppose Bel told you.’
‘Yeah, going on like a fretful pup.’
‘No, about the quack?’
‘Quack? What quack?’
‘Bel got old Doc Elliott in to have a look at the sprat there. He reckons she’ll be okay with a bit of convalescence. He nutted out some jollop for her cough. Bel’s been giving her the invalid treatment all day.’
‘Good of Bella to do that,’ was all Macauley could think of saying.
On the second and third days Buster reacted to his absence in the same way, but as the week went on she became used to it. Either she adapted herself to missing him, or she didn’t worry, knowing that he proved himself able to keep faith.
‘That child loves you,’ Bella told Macauley.
Macauley coloured with embarrassment, the unexpectedness of the remark confusing him.
‘What about a few records on the gramophone, Bella?’ he said.
Bella continued to stare intently at him, touched by her admiration for Buster’s feelings, scarcely aware of Macauley’s awkward glances.
‘She loves you with every ounce of love in her body, the precious little darling.’
Macauley coughed and looked for his tobacco. ‘The gramophone. Tell me where it is and I’ll get it.’
‘I’ve been giving her milk, custards, broth, and she laps them up. Eats them like an angel. Even the rice puddings. And you know how kiddies detest rice pudding?’
‘Yeah,’ Sweeney chipped in, ‘you’ll have her as fat as you before you’re finished. Then you’ll have competition. With me, I mean.’
She gave a squawk of laughter. ‘Isn’t he a funny old bugger, my Lukey?’
At the end of the second week Macauley was sitting in his room brushing his boots when Luke Sweeney came in with a great auctioneer’s bell in his hand.
‘Where are you off to?’ Macauley said. ‘To get the cows?’
Sweeney sat down beside him with an impish look on his face. He winked mischievously.
‘Where’s the sale?’ Macauley persisted, but Sweeney wouldn’t be tempted to tell his secret.
‘You noticed that nipper of yours lately, Mac?’ he said. ‘She’s so happy it’s coming out of her ears.’
‘She’s not getting in your hair during the day?’
‘Hair?’ piped Sweeney, lifting his cap off his bald dome. ‘What hair?’ He suddenly flipped his fingers. ‘Say, I didn’t tell you, did I? I’m getting myself a couple of coursing dogs.’
‘Coursing dogs?’
‘Yeah,’ laughed Sweeney. ‘To chase the hairs off my chest on to my head.’ He slapped Macauley on the knee. ‘Ah, a man’s got to have his little joke,’ he said, wiping his eyes.
‘Where’s Buster now?’ Macauley said.
‘Where do you think she is?’ Sweeney gestured. ‘Three guesses.’
‘With Bella.’
Sweeney nodded: ‘They’re as thick as thieves, the pair of them. The Cow’s taken to her like she was her own, and the little ’un’s really attached. She hasn’t made up to me anything like the way she has to Bella, but I get on all right with her. Listen! There she goes!’
From below Macauley could hear the loud rhapsodic notes of a woman singing. He could have heard them with his head under a pillow. They had all the vociferation of an untrained Wagnerian soprano.
Sweeney crept to the door, held up a finger commanding Macauley to pay attention, and jangled the bell for all he was worth. The singing ceased abruptly. Sweeney giggled. It started up again, rather hesitantly. Then when it was in full stride, Sweeney rang the bell again. The singing stopped. He tittered.
‘Terrible, isn’t it? On the nose.’ He held his nostrils together.
Macauley didn’t commit himself.
‘Every morning it goes on. Caruso and the waterworks all rolled into one.’
Macauley nodded.
‘This is the only way I can stop it,’ Sweeney explained. ‘And the poor thing loves to sing, you know.’ He made a gesture of lenience. ‘Not that I do it every time. Some days my constitution don’t feel like it’s been shot to pieces.’
Bella started again with caution and defiance. She sang a bar. The bell rang. She screeched four notes. The bell jangled shrilly. It went on for five minutes – Bella sneaking out furtive arpeggios, the bell answering; then both voice and metal dinning in unison. Sometimes, so great was his expectancy, Sweeney was a little early with his answers, sometimes a little late.
Finally, satisfied that the dragon was dead, he shut the door and sat down beside Macauley again. ‘Funny part about it, she doesn’t know who’s doing it. She doesn’t know where
the sound comes from. She’s never picked me. She rampages through the house trying to locate the culprit. When I come on the scene she says, kinda peculiar, “That bell was ringing again, Luke.” I say, “What bell, dear?” “Didn’t you hear it?” she says. “I’ve been lying down all the time and I never heard any bell,” I say. She’s beginning to think it’s in her head.’
‘She’ll know when I blow the gaff on you,’ Macauley said.
Alarm hit Luke Sweeney’s face as if it had suddenly been switched on. ‘God Almighty, don’t you ever do that, Mac. You wouldn’t. You couldn’t be so cruel to a man. I’d shake to pieces and fall down in bits.’
He thought he had better go and put his bell back in its hiding place, and crept out.
Macauley walked down into the dining room. There was nobody there. Then a voice said to him, ‘Look, daddy.’
He turned instantly and stared. He hardly knew Buster. She was wearing a little girl’s frock, pink with white trimmings, pink socks and black patent shoes. Her hair was tied with a broad pink ribbon. She was holding the dress out at the sides, and smiling, a little shyly. Bella melted into view behind her, her face one big silent smile.
‘Well, what do you think of your little daughter now? Isn’t she sweet?’
‘Why — ’ Macauley gulped. ‘I — it’s — it seems so long since I saw her in an outfit like that. Well, in a dress, I mean. I’d forgotten.’
He felt somewhat awkward. He didn’t know what other acknowledgement he could make. The way Bella looked at him she seemed to be expecting him to make a fuss.
‘I hope she remembered to thank you,’ he said tritely.
He saw the let-down look on the woman’s face, and he went out vexed with himself.
Macauley’s job was to finish on the Friday of the third week. Varley had nothing else to offer him immediately, but he told Macauley he was set for a job any time with him, and he voluntarily gave him a reference. He also gave him a letter of recommendation to a building contractor he knew in Coonamble, and another to a sawmill owner in the same town.
When Macauley asked Bella what the damage was she told him to go and jump in the lake. He knew it was useless to argue and try to press the money on to her. And he knew they were not being patronisingly generous in refusing to take it. They were genuinely pleased, both of them, to have been able to help a friend. He appreciated that, but he wanted to let them see that he hadn’t lost any of his principle. He told them he would send it to them; and if they didn’t mind keeping Buster for a while he would square that account, too, when he got a little sugar together.
When he looked at himself he wanted to be able to say, I owe nothing to no man.
Bella Sweeney collapsed her huge bulk in a rickety chair that went eeek every time she moved her body. ‘Mind,’ she said. Why, she had been feeling sick all the week whenever she thought of the prospective parting. Imagining the loneliness after Buster had gone.
‘I would have missed her something dreadful,’ she said, sadness finding its way even on to the natural jollity of her face. ‘I’ve got so fond of her. I don’t let things get me down, as my Lukey can tell you, but that would have been something hard to have got over.’ She beamed. ‘She can stay here as long as you like, Mac. She can stay here forever. I’ll keep her if you’ll sell her.’
‘It’ll give me a chance to put some work behind me, get flush again, and work out what’s the best thing to do with her. I was thinking a boarding school might be the shot.’
‘Oh, Mac, she’s too young.’
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’ll get her off your hands as soon as I can.’
‘You’ll have a hard job,’ Bella chyacked him with a great laugh. She rose, twisted round and flumped back in the chair. ‘Even though I know the position, Mac, I still don’t know how you can bear to part with her.’
‘Well …’ Macauley blustered. He could think of nothing to say one way or the other. He drummed his fingers on the table.
‘It mightn’t be easy,’ she said.
‘Easy? What do you mean?’
‘She mightn’t want to stay with me.’
‘Hell,’ Macauley said, ‘there shouldn’t be any trouble about that, should there, the way you two hit it off.’
Bella lowered her voice. ‘Will you tell her?’
Macauley sighed, and started to roll a cigarette. ‘Suppose I’ll have to, yes. But I’ll leave it till the last minute.’
‘When’ll you leave?’
‘Around about dark, Saturday, I thought. When she’s gone to bed.’
Macauley looked up. Bella was laughing at him silently: her eyes smiling, but full of penetrative intentness. He felt uncomfortable.
‘Well, what’s the matter?’ he demanded, a little testily. ‘Don’t you think that’s a good idea?’
She exploded with laughter, rocking and shaking in the chair. Macauley stared at her mystified, watching the jiggling jowls, the eyes crinkled into blue slivers, the blubber bouncing under her dress; hearing the staccato peals of hilarity pounding from the open mouth. He frowned as though he thought she had gone crazy.
She floundered in the chair and swelled to her feet. She gestured hectically. ‘You poor man,’ she gurgled. ‘You kill me.’ She rolled away in an upheaval of mirth.
Macauley looked after her, disconcerted, stroking his jaw.
On Saturday morning he took Buster for a walk. She was dressed in the outfit Bella had bought her and seemed to feel very pleased with herself. She was intent on looking in every shop window they passed. Macauley let her have her way, quelling his exasperation, out of consideration for the fact that this was the last walk they would have together for a long time.
It was while he was lingering outside one of these shops, waiting for Buster to finish discussing the contents of a shop window with Gooby, that Macauley saw the woman coming along the street. And when he saw her, merely taking her in as just another pedestrian in the arc of his glance, he swung back and looked at her twice. He couldn’t quite believe it, but in the back of his mind he was conscious of her appearance being all part and parcel of the good-luck feeling he had been having ever since he came to Walgett. It was just as if she, too, had stepped right out of the barrel after the marbles had been whirled.
He halted her with a smile, and touched his hat. ‘Mrs Callahan.’
She knew him almost instantly. She was a stout little woman with a chubby face and glasses. Her hat was black straw with a sprig of red cherries on it. She waved her hands and clicked her teeth. Macauley grinned. He knew the gestures so well. She was like a dago, Callahan used to say. Tie her hands behind her back and she’d be dumb.
‘No, I don’t believe it,’ she exclaimed, staring at him. ‘I just don’t believe it. How are you, Mac?’
‘Never better. And you – by God, you’re looking well. How do you keep so young?’
She laughed, flattered. ‘Take my Kruschen every morning. Just enough to cover a sixpence. Well, fancy meeting you,’ she clicked. Her greenish-grey eyes alighted on Buster, who had just come up, and was nudging her father’s side. ‘Is this your little girl? Mac, don’t tell me.’
Macauley nodded.
‘Doesn’t she look like you, though!’
‘Reckon.’
‘The dead image. Same mouth. Same eyes. Mac, she’s you to a T. Prettier, of course.’ She laughed. ‘And tell me, how’s Marge?’
Macauley looked at the ground for a moment before replying. ‘More than I can say. We’ve split up.’
Mrs Callahan’s eyes turned cloudy. ‘Oh dear, I am sorry to hear that.’
He shrugged. He didn’t want to elaborate.
‘Is she still in Sydney?’
‘Far as I know she is.’ He didn’t want her to pursue the subject. ‘And what are you doing in these parts? They told me in Millie you were living in Tamworth.’
‘So I am,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here nursing my sister. I’ve got to take her down below for an operation. You were in Millie, were
you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You heard about Tub, of course?’
He nodded. ‘I cleaned up his grave.’
‘Oh, that was kind of you, Mac.’ She looked away. ‘Poor Tub. He was cheerful right to the end, you know, though the pain must have been awful. I don’t know why he had to die. When I think of all the rotten people in the world doing frightful things and going on living I often wonder why a good man like that had to go the way he did.’
‘Yeah, it’s hard to work out,’ Macauley said. ‘But I suppose there’s a reason.’
‘Only God knows it,’ she said. ‘Ah, well.’ She cast off the shadow and brightened. ‘You been here long?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘What a pity I didn’t see you before. And what a wonder we’ve missed each other. I’ve been here nearly a week now.’
‘Still, I’m glad to have run into you again.’
‘So am I. And I’d like to have a real good chinwag. I’d ask you round, but you know how it is. It’s not my house, and Amy is not well and I’ve got my hands full with her.’
‘I couldn’t make it anyway,’ Macauley said. ‘I’m off to — ’ He stopped and glanced down at Buster who was preoccupied with gawking round her. But Macauley lowered his voice. ‘I’m off to Coonamble tonight.’
‘We’re leaving Monday,’ she told him. ‘Isn’t it funny?’ She laughed. ‘But you must drop in when you’re in Tamworth.’
‘I’d like nothing better. What’s your address?’
She told him, and described how to get there, and he told her to look for him towards the end of the year. She said the welcome sign was out all the year round to him, so it didn’t matter when he turned up. They parted, both happier for having met.
About three o’clock that afternoon Macauley was getting his things together and rolling his swag while Buster was absent with Bella. Suddenly the door opened and she came skipping in. She drew up short, and looked all round the room frowning. He kept on being guiltily active.
The Shiralee Page 15
