‘Are we going?’ she asked.
‘We’re not,’ he said, truthfully.
‘What are you doing that for then?’
‘What?’
‘All that.’ She made an all-encompassing gesture. Suspiciously she walked to the chest of drawers and pulled out the bottom drawer. She looked up at him with her head on one side. ‘What about my clothes?’ she demanded in a tone chiding him for his oversight.
‘Look,’ Macauley said, ‘I’m just doing a bit of sorting out. Run down and talk to Mrs Sweeney. I’m busy.’
He pushed her out the door and shut it. He sat on the bed and shook his head. Then a decisive, stern expression settled on his face, and he continued with his packing. He strapped his swag and threw it on the bed. He opened the door, and saw Buster slouched against the wall, looking like a puzzled dog.
He ignored her and walked on down the verandah. She followed him. She never let him out of her sight for the rest of the afternoon. It began to get on his nerves. Putting off the moment of telling her didn’t help any. He wondered why the hell he couldn’t come out with it and be done with it. He was never a man to fiddle about. What was the matter with him now?
The four of them, as usual, ate together when the rest of the boarders had finished, and at the tea table Macauley tried to appear unconcerned, giving the impression that he would be there for years to come. To some extent he seemed to allay Buster’s suspicions. She ate her food hungrily and with relish, her head down. Now and then she looked up under her eyebrows to see if he was still there. Macauley continued to strengthen her gullibility without being blatant about it. Luke Sweeney didn’t help him. Neither did Bella. When he looked at her he got the impression that she was enjoying herself.
While Sweeney washed the dishes and Macauley dried up, Bella took Buster upstairs and put her to bed. Buster didn’t demur. She went quietly. This was her usual bedtime and every night Bella tucked her in.
Macauley left it for an hour. Then he went up, stealthily entered the room, and took his swag off the bed. He held it in one hand, standing still for a moment. Then he bent over her bed to see if she was asleep. She was on her back, calm. He came down to within three inches of her face before he saw her eyes, big and accusing. It was as though she had been waiting to catch him red-handed.
‘Where are you going?’ she cried in a tone of censure and uncertainty.
He felt a surge of anger. ‘You should be asleep.’
She propped herself on one elbow. ‘You going away?’
‘Listen,’ he said, impulsively seizing the opportunity, ‘it’ll only be for a little while — ’
‘No!’
‘Just a little while.’ He hurried out the words against his panic to persuade her before she had a chance to get worked up. ‘I’ll come back later for you.’
‘I’m coming, too,’ she cried.
‘Mrs Sweeney — ’
‘No!’
‘… will look after you. You — ’
‘No, I want to go!’
‘… like Mrs Sweeney.’
She was crying with alarm and consternation and desperate imploration, drowning his wheedling words in a torrent of mumbling and hurling sounds of opposition. He was surprised at the definiteness of her antagonism. Her demented unreasonableness enraged him.
He stood up. ‘Listen,’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want any shindy about this. You’ll stay here, and do what you’re told.’
He moved to the door with the swag on his shoulder. She sprang out of bed and tried to drag him back. He dropped the swag, and in a burst of temper took her up and smacked her backside hard. He put her roughly back into the bed and ripped the blankets up over her head.
‘Now stay there,’ he said.
He whipped the door open, and slammed it hard after him, and walked on with the rage still high in him.
Half a mile along the road he began to feel remorseful. He felt churned up as though his guts had been puddled and put through a mangle. His hand still tingled. He argued with himself. He didn’t have to hit that hard. He didn’t want to leave her like that, anyway. But there was no help for it. It had to be done. There was no other way out. Yet it was a sneak’s way out, and when the hell had he started being a sneak? He was never a sneak in his life. If he wanted something he took it no matter who was looking. If he wanted to do a thing he did it, and damn everything else. He had intended to tell her. Well, why didn’t he? Skulking out like that, deceiving her, leaving her to wake in the morning and find him gone and throwing the onus on others to explain and pacify. She knew he had intended to go that way, too, or did she? Could a kid fathom that? The hurt, the disbelief of knowing it seemed to be in her voice. Or was he only imagining that? Sneaking out. What did he have to sneak out for? If he had to sneak out there must be a reason, there must be something he was ashamed of. And if there was something he was ashamed of … ?
Still, it was the only way to handle a kid like that. And it didn’t kill, it didn’t maim her. It was for her own good. She couldn’t be expected to understand. But she would. And she’d get over it.
He hadn’t gone much farther when he heard her calling him. For a moment he thought it was in his mind. Then he looked back along the dark road towards the lights of the town. He fancied he could see a spectral figure, darkness shaped of darkness, moving towards him. He heard the scuff of feet – the slap-slap-slap of walking and the skip-skip-skip of running.
He sat down on his swag just off the road behind a tree.
He heard the panicky feet. He saw the child come into view and pass him. She slowed down, stopped, listened. He saw her run. He picked up his swag and started off. He heard her ahead of him crying a sort of rhythmic daddy, daddy.
He caught up with her a half a mile farther on. She was sitting in a huddle on the road. She launched herself at the fortress of his strength and protection, refusing to be spurned, trying to convince him that she would never be cast out from the citadel where she belonged and was safe.
She thrust herself up against his solidity and silence. He saw that she had Gooby snuggled under one arm and a bundle of her clothes under the other. She dropped them and clasped his legs.
‘For God’s sake!’ he said. The unnatural noise in the stillness was unnerving. He shook her away. She clasped his legs tighter.
‘What the hell are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to stay with Mrs Sweeney?’
‘I want to come with you.’
The tears of shock and hysteria were vanishing; relief and pleading were taking their place.
‘Listen to me, stop that bawling. You hear?’ He waited for a minute.
‘Stop it!’ he shouted.
‘All right.’
His voice frightened her. She feared a hiding. But she thought if she cried hard enough it would be a weapon against that. Now she sensed the annoyance and rage in him and realised that further crying would only provoke him to hit her.
He felt helpless.
‘Didn’t Mrs Sweeney feed you?’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘Didn’t you have a good bed to lie in?’ He was talking to her as a grown-up. ‘Didn’t you have a cat to play with?’
‘Yes.’
‘She treated you like you’ve never been treated in your life before. You had the best of everything. Well, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, what more do you want? What more can I give you?’
‘I want to come with you.’
He sighed, beaten, angry at his impotence. He softened his voice. ‘Listen, don’t you understand? I’m not leaving you. I’m only going to get a job, and when I start work I’ll send for you.’
‘No!’
‘You’ll only be with Mrs Sweeney for a little while.’
‘No, no, no, no, no, no!’ she raged implacably.
He gave up. ‘Strike me dead, I don’t know. I ought to wring your little neck and chuck you in the bushes there.’
She started to cry a
gain. He listened for a while, letting his anger burn itself out. ‘All right, all right,’ he snapped, exasperated. ‘Shut up your snivelling.’
He watched her gouging her eyes dry with the backs of her hands. Her convulsive sniffles jerked her body like an attack of hiccups. He had to decide what to do: whether to return and tell the Sweeneys what had happened or rely on their savvy to realise what had happened. He had decided to go back when he saw the lights of a car coming along the road from the town.
He stood on the side of the road to let it pass, but it stopped as it reached him. It was a utility, and a man who seemed to be all hat was driving it. Then a body leaned across him and Luke Sweeney called, ‘Hey, Mac, have you got the kid?’
As soon as she recognised the voice Buster ran behind Macauley and clutched the seat of his pants like a crab. From this rampart of defence she shouted, ‘Go away, funny old bugger. Go away, my Lukey.’ She said it as though it was one word or else the name of a Chinaman.
Macauley walked over to the truck, and Buster went with him like a parasitic body.
‘Bel saw her going down the street like a bat out of hell. I had to go and get hold of Andy here, and then he couldn’t get his jalopy started. We scoured the town.’
‘I don’t want to go with you,’ Buster screeched.
‘Shut up!’ Macauley said.
He walked round to the off side of the truck. ‘Looks like it won’t work out, Luke,’ he said.
‘We can take her back,’ Luke Sweeney said. ‘She’ll tame down after a few days.’
‘I’ll run away again,’ Buster threatened savagely.
‘Well, what’s it to be, Mac?’
Macauley thought for a moment, appearing to be undecided, but actually not wishing to show the weakness of backing down too quickly. Then he said, ‘I reckon I’ll have to make out somehow. Sorry you’ve had all this bother.’
‘Aw, no bother,’ Sweeney said. He chuckled. Macauley could see the devilment on his gaunt face. ‘Told you a lie, Mac. We didn’t scour the town. Bel said she knew where Buster was making. She only sent me along to see if the kid reached you all right.’ He gave a yelp of laughter. ‘Okay, Andy.’ He nudged his mate and gave Macauley a tap on the cheek. ‘So long, you big softy. Come and see us again before I fill me coffin. Don’t let the undertaker be the last to let me down.’
Macauley watched the red tail dwindling, and he could see Sweeney in the truck wiping his eyes and saying the bit about a man must have his little joke: Sweeney the dead man full of live men’s bones, the satellite of a great sun who piped off his energy and consumed him and who yet, if he was lost to her, would burn to an ember and go out.
‘He’s gone now,’ Buster said irrelevantly.
Macauley looked down at her. ‘God, you make a man wild.’ He heaved a great sigh. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, dinkum.’
Her eyes were full of malevolent reproof. She said with the utmost indignation, ‘You shouldn’t have left me.’
They walked on for another two miles, neither of them speaking. Macauley because he was thinking, Buster because she wasn’t quite certain what her fate was to be: should he suddenly turn round and decide to go back to Walgett she was ready to rebel.
Then Macaulay told himself there was not much point in walking farther. They might as well wait for the daylight and a lift through. It was the easiest way with her.
He made the bed, one blanket under, one over. It was only an overnight doss. Buster seemed more assured. She snuggled into him.
‘Dad?’
‘Don’t talk to me,’ he said. ‘I’m disgusted with you.’
‘What would happen if the sky fell on you?’
‘Who cares?’
‘All the stars would go bang, wouldn’t they, and there’d be big bonfires and the fire brigade would come.’
‘Shut up and get to sleep.’
She was like a warm dog against his back. She started to hum a little tune to herself, a tune full of broken bars. Then she muttered the words, getting them right, but flat here and there on the melody.
‘With a swing of the left foot
A swing of the right …
Oh, what a dancer,
Oh, what a skite …
Oh, what a dancer, oh, what a skite.’
It was an old bush ballad Bella Sweeney must have taught her.
‘Stop that racket,’ Macauley said, and she obeyed.
In the morning when he woke he turned over. She was asleep, her face streaked with dirty tears. For a long time he looked at the tangled silky hair, the lay of the eyelids on the cheeks, the sooty eyelashes, the small pink mouth: and there was great sense of her tininess, loyalty, and defencelessness in him. And he was moved. He felt disturbed and hostile against unknown threats.
Along the road Buster let it be understood that she still hadn’t quite forgiven him for his treachery. That he could actually go off and leave her to fend for herself against the world – when he was her father, the very centre of her existence, and beloved of her – passed her comprehension. It shocked her to the soul.
Prompted by the hurt, she suddenly glared at him and told him he was a mean old nasty old father.
‘That’s what you think,’ he said.
Her look was fiercely reproachful. ‘Don’t you do that any more. See!’
Her savage resoluteness amused him. He was tempted to hedge with her.
‘What? What’ll you do?’
‘I’ll run away.’
‘You mightn’t find me.’
She thought for a moment. Then she said quickly, slurring the words, ‘I’ll walk along the road, and all the roads, and keep going on the roads ’cos I know you always walk on the roads and I’d find you.’
‘I heard you say something last night I didn’t like.’
‘What?’
‘You called Mr Sweeney a bugger. You mustn’t say that.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s — just don’t say it, that’s all.’
‘Mrs Sweeney says it. You say it, too.’
‘Yes, but I’m big.’
‘Can only big people say it?’
‘Girls don’t say it,’ Macauley explained, sorry he had mentioned the subject. ‘It’s not a nice word.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It just isn’t.’
‘Can I say it when I’m big?’
If you ever get to be big, he answered tolerantly to himself. She skipped ahead of him, happy. She was back in the overalls again, and he couldn’t help noticing how much plumper they were in the behind, and how much more of her stuck out in front. She had really put on weight, and it was flesh, not fat, and firm wiry flesh at that. He thought he’d have to see that she didn’t slip back. It was a good foundation to build on, and he could easily improve on it with a bit better attention and care. Even if he only kept her at that … He suddenly caught his thoughts in mid-hop, and wondered.
Towards high noon a semi-trailer came along and they got a lift through to Coonamble. The town was full of Sunday. Macauley didn’t stay there long. He just looked. He just looked it over, standing in one place, and then went out a little way and set up camp on the banks of the Castlereagh.
At sunset a contraption comprised of a man and a pushbike passed them by, veered off the road, pulled up on the river bank forty yards away and came apart. Macauley was interested to see it was in two pieces. The bike was so stacked and saddled with gear it looked like a rubbish dump on castors. The human half of the machine Macauley couldn’t observe too well with the failing light, but he saw that he was shaggy, saggy and baggy, wearing an eyeshade pulled down to his eyebrows, and the legs of his trousers tucked inside his socks.
As he prepared tea he noticed the stranger busily doing the same. He had a quick jerky walk, almost a short-stepped run as he buzzed about his demesne. Macauley recognised him for what he was, and hoped he wasn’t too ratty. If he was too far gone he’d come along in a while and tell Macauley he was
trespassing on his property and order him off under pain of imprisonment: he’d probably add that he was a personal friend of the police commissioner and the governors of every state. If he was another type he’d charge Macauley with spying on his thoughts, or of finding and keeping the packet of tobacco he lost. And if still another type, the bad and dangerous type, he’d come over and get some dirt off his liver, some of his crookedness against the world; he’d look for a fight and toy with the blade of a pocketknife to back up his menace.
Whatever type he was he was queer in the nut.
Macauley saw his fire glimmering, and saw him sitting back from it hunched forward. He boiled a billy of water and washed his greasy plates, and rinsed the mugs. He sat back and idly smoked a cigarette. Tomorrow he would go after those jobs. He didn’t want to waste any time approaching the contacts Varley had given him. If there was nothing doing with either, he’d scout round and feel the rest of the town out, and if nothing came up he’d get on his way.
He’d have to give some thought to the kid, too.
‘Where’s the man now?’ Buster said.
‘What man?’
‘Over there, that man.’
Macauley peered through the darkness at the glowing fire and its reflections on the nearby trees and its jumping red shadows on the ground. He saw no sign of the swagman.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Buster wanted to know.
‘He’s bedded down, I suppose.’
‘Does he go to bed early like me?’
‘I don’t know. Just go to sleep.’
‘Can I go over and see if he’s there?’
‘No,’ snapped Macauley. ‘You keep away from him.’
He stood up and put his coat on against the nippy air, and threw another stick on the fire. He went back to sitting on the log, smoking reflectively, palms over the blaze.
There was a sudden quick rustle of candlebark. Macauley spun round. The man just seemed to appear from behind the gum.
‘She’ll talk to you if you’ll let her,’ he said, by way of introduction, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the river.
Macauley felt the man had been eavesdropping, had overheard him. Though unafraid, he felt the sweat start on his brow. There was a bit of a shock in his materialising like that.
The Shiralee Page 16
