She had taken up a pot, and was creaming her face, slapping at it. ‘I don’t mind whether I never see you again.’ She went on slapping.
Soon after, he got up and began dressing. When he had finished, he kissed her on the side of the neck. ‘Poor Marcia! I hope you’ll find the love you need.’
‘I don’t need love,’ she whimpered.
‘The fucking, then.’
‘Go!’ she shouted. ‘And don’t come near me. If Greg were here …’ she tailed off. ‘I’ll write to Greg and tell him he ought …’ but again her voice and the impulse expired.
So he went. He might have packed his bag that night and asked Don to drive him to the train on Monday, but could not feel he was intended to break away from ‘Bogong’ yet. Marcia’s shoulders, as he took his leave, had only half-decided to shed him. He did not want it, nor, he liked to think, did others for whom he had discovered an affection. Peggy Tyrrell, for instance. If he had cuckolded Greg Lushington, his fondness and respect for that decent man were intact. As for Don Prowse, what would he do without somebody to pull his boots off?
Dearest,
I love your far too rare letters, but found this latest one surprising. You are of course just that, or you wouldn’t have disappeared as you did before the War, without explanation (even since, there has been no attempt to explain, and your father and I are left nursing unhappy guesses) then shooting off to bury yourself at ‘Bogong’, to lead what amounts to a labourer’s life.
I know that Edward has the highest opinion of that boring old Greg, which you, apparently, now share. Perhaps he is someone who appeals to men. I accept that. Men are what one can only accept. What I cannot stomach is Marcia Lushington from any viewpoint—who you are pitchforking at me as though you were having an affair with her. Darling, are you? But don’t tell me, I couldn’t bear to know.
Incidentally, the Golsons—my sweet Joanie who for some reason you avoid, and Curly, another of the male bores—share your passion for the Lushingtons. They have visited several times at ‘Bogong’. Curly goes trout fishing with Greg, with Marcia too (apparently she casts no mean fly.) Joanie rests with a good book. As far as I am concerned, it would have to be an extra good read, down on the farm with the Lushingtons.
Marian has had her fourth. No trouble—any of them. If only you had married nice healthy Marian, it would have made such a difference to all our lives. I’m sure I should have been a changed woman—the whole family lunching together at the Royal Sydney on Sundays. I believe grandchildren would have liked me.
But I’m not accusing you, Eddie dear. Nothing ever happens as it might. So let us forgive each other.
Your poor old
Mother
P.S. The third cyst between Biffy’s toes has, I’m glad to report, ripened and burst, but alas, she’s preparing a season.
P.P.S. Your father is on circuit in the north-west—I don’t doubt enjoying himself exceedingly.
P.P.P.S. Don’t think I begrudge Daddy those country duties which mean so much to him.
While sifting flour for a batch of scones, Mrs Tyrrell announced, ‘They’ve fixed a date for Dot Norton’s weddun.’ Raised breast high, the sifter trailed a veil. ‘Arr, it ’ull be lovely!’ She assumed the expression that some women wear for a bride. ‘Mrs Lushington ’ull see to it that Dot has a proper outfit—and everythink the baby ’ull need.’
‘But did they trace the man who came selling the separator parts?’
‘Nao!’ Peggy hawked, and abandoned her dainty fingertip technique working the butter into the flour.
‘But if he was the father?’
‘The father ain’t what matters. It’s the ring. No girl wants the loaf in ’er oven to turn into a bastard on ’er ‘ands.’ She slopped the milk; she kneaded her dough so passionately the basin almost flew off the oilcloth on to the lino.
‘Besides,’ said Mrs Tyrrell when things were again under control, ‘it wasn’t the separator man.’
‘How do you know?’
‘If yez been around long enough, you know.’
‘Then who’s the official father?’
‘The who?’
‘The one that’s gunner be registered,’ he nagged.
‘Arr,’ she paused. ‘Denny,’ she said. ‘I told yer, didn’t I?’
‘But he’s a half-wit.’
‘No worse than a lot of others. There’s padded rooms in a lot of the Woolambi homes.’
‘Won’t he mind fathering another man’s child?’
‘ ’E’ll ’ave a woman ter bake for ’im, an’ boil ’is mutton. That’s what’s practical, ain’t ut?’ Her gums showed him she was growing resentful as she marshalled her scones on the baking sheet.
‘Sounds extraordinary to me. Shocking.’
‘Anyways, it’s what Mrs Lushington arranged.’
‘Knowing the father?’
‘Everybody knows the father. But I’m not sayun. If you wanter know more, better ask Marce.’
‘It’s none of my business.’
‘When you’ve been on at me the last ’arf hour?’ She shoved the baking sheet in the oven and slammed the door. ‘That’s what’s wrong with edgercated people—argue, argue—waste yer time in argument.’
She laughed rather bitterly, and flounced out, but returned soon after, the wrinkles in her cheeks veiled in what looked like the flour with which she had dusted her recent batch of scones.
‘I’ll tell yer, Eddie,’ she announced, ‘but confidential.’ She started munching on her gums. ‘No! I’m not gunner!’ she exploded. ‘Even though ’e’s a rabbiter, Dickie Norton’s a decent bloke—and I reckon a widower must feel the cold down there along the bloody flat.’
Spring did take over at last, if spasmodically, days of brilliant, slashing light alternating with a return to leaden rain squalls; the nights still crackled as he stood shivering, pissing from the veranda’s edge on to frosted grass.
By day a visible green had crept along the grey shoulders of the hills, but the tussock remained bleached and sterile throughout the flat. Birds seemed to soar higher, to sing more shrilly, solitary wagtails to swivel more expectantly on the strand between the barbs of a wire fence, peewits tumbled through the air in pairs, briar clumps greening over were filled with the twitter of small, serious bird-couples.
The river flowed through the spring scene, at times with a mineral glitter, at others with a supple, animal life, each aspect probably more apparent to stranger than to native. In fact it seemed to Eddie Twyborn that, with the exception of Marcia Lushington, who was actually ‘from down Tilba way’, the native-born remained unaware of the landscape surrounding them, except as a source of economic returns and a fate they must accept, or in the case of Denny Allen, a river from which, by some stroke of imbecile genius, he could land a trout after one flick with a dry fly; he might even have succeeded with a naked hook.
Denny would stand amongst the tussocks flicking at the rippled water, itself as brown and speckled as a trout, despoiling the river time and again.
‘What are you going to do with so many?’
‘Take ’em ’ome to the missus.’ He smiled his most imbecile smile from behind his steel-rimmed spectacles and grooved, greenish teeth.
‘Dot mightn’t thank you for bringing such a lot. Gutting trout!’
‘Mrs Allen don’t gut no trout. Guttun’s my job,’ he said proudly.
Scrawny, sawney, his woollen singlet buttoned up to where the hair broke out in a frill below his plucked-cockerel’s throat, the greasy waistcoat never discarded whatever the temperature or time of day, Denny Allen was a happy man Eddie Twyborn often found himself envying.
On one of the more benign mornings of this reluctant Monaro spring Eddie and Denny were digging out a warren not far from the river bank.
‘How’s the baby?’ Eddie asked.
‘Got the colic.’
‘What do you do for it?’
‘Dunno.’ Denny grunted, and dug deep into red earth. ‘Mrs Allen knows
. She give it some kinda water.’ He slashed deeper with the shovel, fetching up from a nest below tufts of fur and wads of withered grass. ‘She knows—the mother!’ His exertions made him salivate, and the saliva was carried by the wind in a long, transparent loop.
Eddie dug. His hands no longer blistered. The skin had hardened. A man’s hands. His whole life had been so preposterous, to think of it made him laugh.
Denny followed suit, for the joke he had not been asked to share. He never seemed resentful of a status forced on him by lack of wits. Perhaps his intuitions as stockman, fisherman, and rifle shot, raised him in his own estimation to a level which compensated.
They dug away.
Denny started slobbering. ‘ ’Ere she is—the bloody mother!’ he shouted.
He flung out a shovelful of bleeding fur which his matted hounds slavered and gobbled.
‘An’ ’ere’s the kickers!’ Denny shovelled out the litter, which followed the doe down the gullets of the ravenous dogs.
‘It’s fun, ain’t it? you gotter admit, Eddie!’ Fulfilled, Denny sat panting, laughing, on the edge of the trench, rejoicing in his skills, waiting to return to the wife who had been made an honest woman and the child who was officially his.
On such an enamelled morning Eddie, whose own contentment was never more than transient, as capricious as a Monaro spring, felt less disgusted than envious of his simple friend. Happiness was perhaps the reward of those who cultivate illusion, or who, like Denny Allen, have it thrust upon them by some tutelary being, and then are granted sufficient innocent grace to sustain it.
As it was about the middle of the day and the warren by now destroyed, the pair of rabbit murderers prepared to take their lunch break. Denny had got together one of his miraculous fires out of a handful of dead grass and another of twigs, and the two quart pots were already steaming and singing, when Eddie noticed a horseman descending the hill behind them.
‘Mind if I join you blokes?’ It was the manager returning from some unspecified employment, or simply from riding round exercising his self-importance.
He and Denny were soon monotonously intoning the exchange of comments on weather and wool, fluke and worms, lucerne and sorghum. Eddie wished he could join in, but did not think he would ever master the liturgy. A certain repugnance or perversity in the face of their ritual solemnity would always prevent him.
He remained seated inside the palisade of his own thoughts and the surrounding landscape. It may not have been sexual ambivalence after all which prevented him identifying himself with other men; his true self responded more deeply to those natural phenomena which were becoming his greatest source of solace.
Prowse and Denny were still at it, while knocking the ash off the ends of their loosely packed cigarettes, as he finished his cold chop and the last yellow crumb of Peggy Tyrrell’s cake. He got up and wandered contentedly enough a little way along the river, when suddenly the warmth, the light, the glistening flow of brown water, moved him to take off his clothes. He lay awhile, exposing his vertebrae to the sun, almost dozing, his genitals pricked by dead grass.
Roused by the approach of his companions’ voices, he was driven by confusion, if not shame, to plunge into the river below him. The effect was electrifying, the water so cold the breath was almost beaten out of his lungs, his only thought to survive in the suddenly malignant current when he was by no means an indifferent swimmer.
As he swam he glanced up, gasping, blinking from under a wet fringe, at Prowse and Denny seated on their horses, staring down, the horses snorting, Denny embarking on a frightened giggle, Prowse frowning, or glaring, lips drawn back in a smile which conveyed both scorn and unwilling admiration.
‘Better watch out, Ed. If you flash yer arse about like that, someone might jump in and bugger yer.’ The message was made to sound as brutal and contemptuous as possible. ‘What about you, Denny? Are yer game?’
Denny’s giggles were cut short. ‘Not on yer life! Not gunner bugger nobody. Might catch a chill.’ His hand went up to his already buttoned woollen singlet. ‘Missus ’ud rouse if I went ’ome crook. She’s got enough with a baby on ’er ’ands.’
Prowse withdrew his non-smile and the two horsemen sauntered on their way, leaving their companion to follow if he had any sense left in him.
Eddie climbed out by handfuls of tussock and footholds of rock. From feeling like a helpless drifting frog at the mercy of the current, he was again a naked stumbling man, the ribbons of a burning wind lashing and sawing at his shoulders. In his isolation he was free and whole, but only momentarily. He saw not so much the healing landscape as the images of Marcia and Prowse alternating in the dancing light. He tried to extinguish them by putting on his shirt, but they continued flickering, beige to burnt orange inside the dark tunnel of shirt.
When he was again decent, he rode after those who had contributed to his humiliation and who might think fit to remind him of it. Probably not Denny: he was too simple, and must himself have been humiliated in other forgettable circumstances. Prowse, in his position of authority and inviolable masculinity, might be less willing to let a victim off the hook.
As it happened they gave no sign of recognition when the delinquent caught up with them. The three rode together in a silence broken by horses’ wind and the jingling and chafing of harness. Denny yawned noisily, a horse’s yawn which exposed his broad green teeth. Very erect, Prowse simply glared back at the glare from under the brim of a stained felt hat, every bristle of his stubble tipped with gold.
The morning after, Prowse called out to Eddie who was saddling the Blue Mule for work, and told him rather sulkily while looking in the opposite direction, ‘You’ll find a filly over in the yard. You’re supposed to have her as a replacement for that bastard you’ve been riding up to date.’ He spat, and added, ‘A black filly.’ And walked away towards the little runabout he drove around the place on busier occasions.
The filly was an elegant beast of evident breeding. When Eddie fetched her down to the harness room, he called out to Prowse, who was having trouble starting his truck, ‘Who should I thank for this luxury?’
Cranking hard at his unresponsive vehicle, the manager who fancied himself as a mechanic was growing steadily crankier. ‘Why—Lushington of course,’ he grunted back. ‘Isn’t he the owner?’
‘But Greg’s away.’
‘I had a post-card asking me to find you a decent mount.’
‘Well, thanks, Don. Where is Greg?’
‘Eh?’ The truck farted once or twice and started, almost knocking its driver down. ‘Switzerland!’ he shouted. ‘Greg’s in Geneva.’
Eddie was in laughing mood. ‘Was it a pretty post-card?’ he called.
Prowse was so incensed, either by the effeminate word, or his own indignity, that he jumped inside the truck and drove off without answering.
When Eddie had saddled the delicate creature his new horse, and she stood snorting back at him, all forelock and rolling eye, Mrs Tyrrell came out to congratulate and admire.
‘Arr, she’s lovely, ain’t she? A real treat! A little darlun!’ she gushed like some lady of a higher class, and unfolding her arms from under the black bobbled shawl, stroked the glistening neck and even planted a kiss above the beast’s tremulous muzzle.
Eddie was suppressing his own delight, to reveal in private to the object of it. ‘Wonder what we ought to call her? We’ll have to think of a name, Peggy.’
‘Goalie,’ she announced without second thought. ‘Goalie’s ’er name.’
‘How do you know?’
‘That’s what Marcia said it is.’
‘What’s Marcia to do with her? It’s Mr Lushington’s horse. Isn’t he the owner of “Bogong”?’ he reminded a lesser servant with a primness he immediately deplored.
‘That may be,’ Mrs Tyrrell agreed dreamily. ‘But I’d say Mrs Lushington bought the horse. Marcia’s a great one for gifts. You should ’uv seen the bassinet she give Dot and Denny for that poor squeaker of theirs.�
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Eddie mounted his ‘gift’ and headed for a boundary fence Prowse had told him off to repair. The filly went cautiously at first, then with increasing pleasure in her own paces, and only random snorts as they left the settlement behind. Several times she shied, and once almost scraped him off against a sapling when a rabbit scut startled her. But horse and rider were becoming acquainted, accepting each other.
‘Coalie!’ When he had been flirting with the shameful idea of calling her ‘Ouida’. Would Prowse have known enough? Who had at one stage confessed to Meredith.
But Goalie—and Marcia!
He was standing on the brow of a hill without his shirt, the black filly tethered close by. He had finished straining a difficult length of fence where it plunged into a gully, and was rucked over rocks, and damaged by driftwood and floodwater, when his employer’s wife rode up.
‘What a coincidence,’ she remarked, ’to meet on what is—if not my favourite—almost my favourite ride.’
Faced with the extent of her idleness, he must have looked as surly as the manager. He was also, somewhat ironically, embarrassed by her finding him without his shirt, but her brief glance showed no sign of proprietorship.
He put on the shirt and stood stuffing the ends into his pants. During this operation she even looked away, her face expressing disinterest rather than modesty.
‘I’ve always liked it up here,’ she said. ‘It’s different from the rest of the place—rough, but sheltered. It’s good for having a howl in if you feel like one.’
‘Do you often feel like having a howl?’
‘Not often. But sometimes. Like anybody, I expect.’
He went to untether the black filly.
‘Do you like your new horse?’ she asked.
He was surprised at her use of the generic word; he would have expected her to be more specific, like a horsy man revelling in horsy terms. But she seemed as detached as her own bay gelding, arching his neck only tentatively, his nostrils suspicious of an unfamiliar female.
‘She’s a nice little thing,’ Eddie admitted with equal restraint. ‘It was good of Greg to think of me—in Switzerland.’
The Twyborn Affair Page 26
