Best Australian Short Stories

by Douglas Stewart

  The roadside timber was different from that which shades the new road. The thin soil of the ridges ran to no opulence of leafage, only to slender, grey rnessmate saplings, with bare gravel and rocky outcrops between, and a few tufts of grey wire-grass. Here was no bird-song, no undergrowth, no ground life. It was a lean, spare bush; life clung to these bony heights only by drawing in on itself; you imagined that the putting forth of a new leaf would be a matter affecting deep issues, and notable in an uneventful calendar.

  At long distances—and for brief seasons—the roadside would be adorned with miraculous clumps of wattle and sarsaparilla, but the old road—though it occasionally commanded noble vistas of valley and range, was wholly a working road. In places it broke into a broad web of tracks—detours made among the trees by the settlers over boggy hollows in wet weather. On the high places the wheels ground over protruding boulders, or lurched over the exposed roots of trees.

  By the kindness of friends I was on my way to revisit Tommy’s Hut for a day, after many years and much wandering. We had motored from Melbourne, gliding across the plain in less than half an hour, along a highway horses had needed a day to cover in more laborious years. From the last township before you come to the foot of the range I had been welcoming old landmarks, resenting new ones, noting the disappearance of others; becoming, bit by bit, a little uncertain of myself.

  The general contours of the landscape were much as I remembered them, although there was a timbered hill which I seemed to have forgotten, and the willowed creek was closer to the township than I thought. A grey homestead drowsing on the lower slope of a green knoll was reassuringly familiar—even to its rust-mottled roof—and the sheep grazing on the flat below might have been those that memory recalled, rather than their probable descendants of many generations. But a sprawling roadside barn had vanished, the grass quite unmarked where it had once stood; and bleached and brown skeletons were all that remained of a once notable clump of old red-gums. Split-rail fences had largely given way to wire, and some rows of tall pines that had no place in recollec-tion affirmed the slow passing of the years. A red tractor with plough in tow—modernity in the long-remembered place—was a small shock to the heart, even while reason hastened to bring feeling to heel.

  “The old road up the range should begin about a half a mile further on,” I said, almost anxiously, as we came under the foothills, and, “Yes, there it is”, as it came into sight.

  John must have caught the note in my voice. “We’ll have a look- see,” he said, and shortly after turned onto the gravel. A hundred yards farther on he slipped into second gear and we purred steadily up the spur where the mountain settlers’ horses had once won their way toilsomely.

  As we ascended, the sides of the spur fell away like the sides of a roof-gable, revealing valley and lowland on either side. Down in the valley to the left there was a patch of brown tillage where I remembered a peach orchard in a mist of pink bloom. Near the top of the rise we passed the spot where a loaded cart had once gone hurtling backward down the right-hand declivity.

  It was eleven o’clock at night, and we were trying to get up the range with a horse weary from the day’s journey from the city. A chock thrown under the wheel must have been a clod of clay and not a rock as was intended, for the cart ran back.

  “Chock! For God’s sake, chock!” The driver’s voice had panic in it. There was a frantic scraping of hooves as the horse struggled to regain control. Then the horse and cart disappeared into the night. Out of the dark came the thump of something overturning, and a bang and clatter as the dislodged load shot off and avalanched down the hill. Then the groan of a horse, followed by sounds of ineffectual plunging. Then silence again.

  It was chill dawn before we had extricated the horse from under the cart, man-handled the cart back onto the road, collected our scattered goods, reloaded, and—shaken and hollow-eyed—were on again on our way. A shaft of the cart, lodging against a stump had stood prop against complete disaster.

  From the top of the first rise the ascent of the range is more gradual, but steep enough; a heavy pull and a bit of level going; a dip down along a saddle between two ridges, and then ascent of another spur; always with that lean bush on either side, perspec-tives of slender grey trunks, with a scattering of trees of larger growth as you penetrated the hills.

  It was not good travelling for a car. John would have had an easier time on the new road. His interest in the old road—and that of Hilda and Hugh—was only through me. I appreciated his setting himself to tool a sedan carefully up six miles of rough going; and I appreciated the willingness of the other two, consenting to be thrown about in the back seat as we lurched slowly across deep wash-outs dug by the rains of past winters, and accept-ing in faith our gingerly passage over rotting culverts.

  Up the first spur, and for half a mile afterwards, we saw a couple of recent cartwheel marks on the road before us—firewood cutters’, most likely—then these disappeared among the trees, and we realized that the old road was quite abandoned. It was natural to wonder if we could reach our destination; but the road went on as if in the forlorn keeping of a faith no longer required of it; and John, with no exchange of words, accepted the challenge.

  As well as being deeply channelled by past rains, the road was littered with fallen timber—a lace of twigs, leaves, great branches, an occasional whole tree—brought down by the winds in the years since it was last used by the settlers. The side-tracks that had led to the settlers’ homes were abandoned, the moss deep in the old wheel-ruts. Haulage was by motortruck now, and passed along the new road. The dray, the spring-cart, the jinker, the occasional bullock-wagon that had once comprised the old road’s trickle of slow traffic were at one now, presumably, with the split-rail fences, the vanished barn and the splintered red-gums.

  Only the old road itself endured, a weathered line scrawled roughly through the ranges. Its loneliness and emptiness grew upon us as we topped each rise and turned each bend and came upon further untravelled stretches; a highway advanced in dis-repair, still passable, but unmarked in years by wheel or heel or foot. It had something of the quality of an old garment that has given good wear, and something of the eeriness of a deserted dwelling.

  As we passed the old side-tracks I named them from memory—”Glendenning’s Turn-off”, “Cummins’s Turn-off”, “Jamieson’s Turn-off”.

  I explained how each of these turn-offs had once led to the homes of two or three selectors, and took its name from the family that had been first to settle. Each track’s point of departure from the road had once been the scene of small twice-weekly meetings. Mr Bailey, who owned the store at Tommy’s Hut, used to journey on Tuesdays and Fridays of each week to the railway below the ranges, with his wagon and horses. He carried mail for the settlers, sold them newspapers, picked up packages for them at the rail, bought butter and eggs from them, and did a small wayside business in groceries, haberdashery, lamp-wicks and other kinds of country-store stock. He also did a gratis trade in local gossip.

  His times of passing were known, and a little before he was due there would be a small gathering of people at each turn-off; a woman or two—perhaps with a piece of crochet or other current needlework to fill the time of waiting—a few small children, a boy or girl past school age, and perhaps a man or youth with sprouting beard, if there was a sack of flour to be shouldered. These little gatherings of an hour were a pleasant break in the isolation of selection life, and notable in a restricted social round.

  Mr Bailey could always be heard before his wagon came into sight around the nearest bend of the road. Years on the road had accustomed him to driving with his thoughts on other things. His cry of command to the horses had become clipped to a shrill bark uttered loudly and repeated unthinkingly every fifty yards. “Yah-yep! Yah-yep!” He might have had a lively terrier for passenger.

  He often approached his stopping-places bottom first as he groped behind the seat for packages. The horses drew up thankfully of their own a
ccord. As he shuffled the mail he peered at each envelope as if he were seeking the answer to a difficult riddle, and he shouted the names as if he were announcing the result to an expectant multitude instead of the little knot of humans close about his wheel. He was the only man of business in the community. In his dealings with us he was very obliging and scrupulously just, and yet, as he gathered up his reins, he always looked as if he were counting up how many pennies we had been worth to him; and there always seemed to be a note of triumph in the terrier bark that came back to us as he trundled off with the dust rolling up behind his wagon.

  It was White’s Turn-off I was looking for, and Sims’s selection, where I first put down roots in the earth. Arthur Sims was from the Old Country, a man of Kent who had spent the better part of a lifetime in Australia—or the Colonies, to use the term he employed with a slight air of patronage—bringing up a large family by dint of heavy toil until, in his late fifties, he had found himself with enough money to make a small start for himself on the land; a dream that had stalked his thoughts for years, growing more insistent as the time before him shortened. I was the boy about the place, wide-eyed, and with a mind as receptive as the soil to water.

  The family, in addition to Mr and Mrs Sims, comprised two daughters and three sons; there was Jessie, aged about fourteen, in her last year at school, strong-limbed, blue-eyed and as blonde as new rope; imbued with something more than a tomboy interest in every aspect of the outdoor life of the selection. We were friends, even acknowledged sweethearts, following the day when we exchanged, in the twilight of the barn, the startling kiss of adolescence. Annie, aged sixteen, a buxom girl with smooth honey-coloured hair parted in a white line up the centre of her head, was one to whom the four walls of a dwelling were in the nature of a cocoon. She was the protectress and student observer of our virtuous attachment.

  The sons—Ernie who was before my time, Harry who came after my arrival, and whose going overlapped Charlie’s arrival and preceded my own departure—were a special feature of the place. They came in their turn from their wanderings far and wide to toil awhile shoulder to shoulder with the old man. Here was a home-life and mum and dad. Here was a son’s duty. Here was effort with which they could identify themselves, until the calls that young men answer drew them off. Harry, the one I came to know best, was twenty-four, sober to the point of dourness, hard-working, and with a pride in past feats of labour on the ballast trucks of railway construction camps.

  Mrs Sims I remembered only as a smallish dark figure ever hurrying about some household task, someone whose kindness I took as much for granted as I had taken my own mother’s. Mr Sims was a man of medium physique and courageous countenance. Under a bald head fringed with greying curls he had fine blue-grey eyes in a bronzed face, a straight nose, and a good mouth showing between moustache and grizzled beard. Hard work had affected him. His gait was stiff-kneed and he walked with drooping shoulders and dangling hands. He had a habit—perhaps it was the Kentish accent—of drawling and distorting certain vowels. In his mouth “yes” became “yuurce” and “year” “yuur”. He had a melodious voice and in his lighter moments would pause in his work to troll a line of song, most often, “I’ll Be a Jolly Pedlar and Around the World I’ll Roam”.

  In bed he wore a nightgown and nightcap. I saw him in them once when he returned to the living-room, after going to bed, for something he had forgotten. I had never seen such garments and, in combination with whiskers, the sight overwhelmed me. I think my astonished stare embarrassed him a little, an embarrassment he sought to turn to humorous account with a large wink before darting from view.

  He was not one to take part in evening activities. After tea he would scratch his beard a little while the washing-up was in progress, then remove his boots, and, carrying them, depart stocking- foot to his room at the opposite end of the small dwelling. Sometimes he would take with him a large seedsman’s catalogue, the only book I ever saw in his hands, to read for a few minutes in bed before putting out the light. On these occasions—much to the annoyance of us young ones—he would interrupt the elementary card game or snakes-and-ladders that followed washing-up by communicating the results of his study in a voice that carried clearly through the hessian partitions.

  “Jessie! Annie! Are you thuure?”

  “Yes, dad.”

  “I think I’ll plant ’taters between the Jonathans, where we had the beans last yuur.”

  Silence from the players absorbed with their game.

  “Jessie! Annie! Do you huur me?”

  “Yes, dad.”

  Another silence.

  “Jessie! Annie! Are you thuure?”

  A resigned voice: “Yes, dad.”

  “It says here, that Yates’s Mammoth Maincrop is the thing for cool climates and heavy soils, but I don’t care for ’em. I think I’ll plant Bates’s Early Wonder, same as I did yuur afore last.”

  Silence, accompanied by glances of exasperation between the players.

  “Jessie! Annie! Do you huur me?”

  “Ye-e-e-s! Of course we can hear you!” And mumblingly, “Worse luck!”

  Mr Sims had little time for reading even his seedsman’s catalogue. In his reckoning, when it was too dark for work it was time for sleep. In this he was something of a household tyrant. Soon after we heard the catalogue flop on the floor we could hear his voice inquiring whether we were ever going to bed, and expressing surprise that we still had the. lamp burning. These words, addressed ostensibly to the younger members of his household, were perhaps also by way of tactful intimation to his spouse, Lucy, that it was time she laid aside her darning and joined him in sleep.

  He would wear us down in the end, and we would break up reluctantly, the girls to their room adjoining the living-room and I to my bunk in a little room at the end of the barn, there to be companioned before falling asleep by the munching of the horse in his stable at the other end of the building, the occasional rattle of the watchdog’s chain, the spooky call of a mopoke, or the complaining bark of a fox in the nearby bush.

  Mr Sims had selected a hundred acres on the edge of the big timber country; heavily forested land, some of the trees as thick through the butt as the length of a couple of axe-handles. My arrival was in the fourth year when, a little at a time, ten acres had been cleared, ploughed, and planted with fruit-trees, and a house and barn had been built. But clearing was still going on at the edge of the bush in the intervals between caring for the young orchard, so I came to know what it meant to uproot the living forest with a few small tools and make it vanish back to the elements.

  It took upwards of half a week of sweat and hard breathing with mattock, shovel, and axe to grub and fell one of those trees. It went over at last like grandeur undone, its leaves wailing, and crashed to earth with terrible and dusty impact. Its trunk lay dramatically inert, and the yellow ends of its shattered tangle of branches seemed to protest dumbly against our triumph. The severed roots of the stumps were cocked up as high as a man’s head; you could have buried a dray in the hole you had dug; and two men could see each other only from the chest up across its prone trunk. The trunk had to be sawn through in several places, the branches lopped and cut into manageable lengths, the stump end rolled clear of the hole, and the sawn logs of the trunk swung round and piled for burning—human strength and the craft of pole and lifting-jack pitted against earth’s tenacious clutch of her own.

  The fires had to be stoked for weeks on end, as well as being shaken down each night—spark fountains leaping in the dark—before you went to bed. Every chip from the axe, stick and fragment of wood, had to be stooped for and fed in armfuls to the fires. While the burning went on—and that was just one tree—the buttress roots remaining in the ground had to be traced and uncovered to below plough depth, cut through in several places, torn from their moorings in the subsoil, and lifted and cast on the fires, then the. heavy clay returned, shovelful by shovelful, to the holes from which stump and root had come. From all this you got some idea o
f how much had been done since the day Mr Sims and Ernie had pitched their tent in the forest and made a start.

  When we paused for a breather or a strengthening snack it was Mr Sims’s habit to sit facing the young orchard, fondling his beard and heartening himself in present labour with the thought of labour well done. At such moments he was prone to live past struggles over so fully as to forget that another son now toiled beside him.

  “Ernie, d’you mind that whopping big gum that stood right where the end of that row of Ribston Pippins is now?” he would say, turning round. “Oh, it’s you Harry! Well, Ernie looked up at that tree and he said to me, Dad,’ he said, ‘we won’t get the best of this bugger inside a twelvemonth!’ Man, he was a big ‘un!” Here Mr Sims paused to dwell in thought on the size of the branching giant that had been vanquished, and to give us time to imaginc its proportions. “But we got rid of him!” he added in triumphant recollection. “By frawst, we did!”

  In addition to the living trees there were the stumps of the dead, like great half-decayed teeth, to be dug and wrenched piece-meal from the earth and piled for burning, and the striving horde of saplings to be worried loose with mattock and axe one by one and gathered up to the fires, and the ground raked clean of every thing that might foul the tillage. It was Mr Sims’s pride that there should be no by-passed stumps in the cultivation, no forest litter to sour the soil, no hidden root to snub the flow of the plough. When at last the acre marked was cleared it looked strangely tidy, like a schoolyard on .a Saturday morning, only that the earth was criss-crossed with red and white bars where the log fires had been.

  There were only light cultivation tools on the selection, so a man had to be brought froth a distant place with a heavy plough and three big horses to break up the ground; and the heavy earth gave to his mould-board with unwilling groans and the explosive snap-ping of small roots; and the yellow-grey furrows lay over against each other as hard and unyielding as paving slabs. It was left to lie like that, to weather, while we shifted the fence to include the new cultivation. Then the sods were ready to break down and must be ploughed and harrowed and rolled and ploughed and harrowed again and made up into banked lands before the little fruit-trees were set out in their sedate rows.