by Murray Bail
The more the young Frenchman was diverted from his mission on behalf of the ethnographical museum the more flimsy did his presence seem. He had no difficulty in seeing the shadows of photography as a form of chemical theft.
The actual earth, the flora and fauna, simply had more substance.
What happened to him became legend itself. In his second year, alone in the backblocks of western Queensland, he happened to stub his foot on a jutting rock. The rock glittered, and when he found others he said something aloud in French. He could not believe what he saw. On the site now is an enormous silver mine, illuminated at night, working around the clock every day. Such accidental discoveries were still possible then in the New World.
His unexpected death a few days before returning to France was just as casual, accidental too.
All along his widow had lived with her own precious silver deposit, a photograph, smaller than her hand, of him standing beside her larger father in serge; it was then he moved from the tree and turned to Ellen, shielding his eyes, she now remembered.
• 36 •
Baileyana
ALTHOUGH SHE wandered over the many different surfaces of her room, where her eyes had rested many times before, Ellen never tired of it. All was muted and soft, a comfort. The air of worn familiarity offered important soothing qualities, it seemed.
Yet Ellen tossed and slid about throughout light and dark, from one end of herself to its opposite.
She was both calm and agitated; suffered extended lassitude; in the next breath, restlessness. There has to be a stout medical term for this up and down and contradictory sliding-across condition.
Although she lay in bed she remained unrested. Although she welcomed the sun and its warmth, as well as the many faint sounds of the outside world, she would suddenly from her pillows picture a tree, and feel a hatred of trees, of all her father’s trees. She never wanted to see another sprig of drooping khaki leaves ever again. She could no longer face the world. How could she go on living on the property?
In this mood Ellen went back over her clothes, tried on her shoes. She went back to the almost bare shops in Sydney, where the thin women in black had served with their noses tilted. Then she had a sudden mad impulse to give all her good clothes away, including the cream dress with white buttons and her red shoes. At night she woke up talking or at least with her mouth wide open, while during the day she remained in bed with scarcely a word. Her temperature rose, she went into decline. It was simply beyond her strength to halt the decline, which sometimes imitated a physical movement, such as slowly sliding off the end of the bed, into nothing; nor, at that stage, did she care.
A man drowning in a bucket was a terrible dream she had (and what could that possibly represent?).
Until her illness, her father out of some unspoken tact had never entered her room; and now he was sitting at the end of the bed for hours at a stretch, or else popping his head around the door to see if she was all right.
Some afternoons she opened her eyes to find several men seated beside her bed, watching her.
The old doctor in his linen jacket was a regular; Ellen saw how his face, marbled by the morning light, looked unhappily out of time and place. Reading her temperature, and asking the same questions, he tapped a fingernail on his teeth. He sat there a good hour or more. Ellen liked it when he began humming.
Ha! To cheer her up her father enquired in his finest wheedling voice, ‘I don’t suppose a man is allowed to have a smoke?’ And by the time she could begin to nod, let alone imply a memory-laden smile, the match had flared—there’s a deeply geological sound.
Meanwhile, Mr Cave moved in with his brown suitcase, hat and hair brushes to one of the spare rooms. He was in the house all day, clearing his throat. Part of the family, more or less, he felt comfortable with his rights. He was patient.
Still, he was beginning to wonder if this drama had anything to do with him. After all, the naming of more than five hundred trees was not as easy as it looked. (Dozens had been spirited away from the most obscure corners of Australia.) And as the number of successfully ticked-off names accumulated, the dark cluster of shifting-about names took on an almighty weight and height, like a library about to keel over. He could feel it himself. Once past the halfway mark the greater would be his public fall! Ellen’s future too depended on his success or failure; she would have been on edge, obviously. It could have affected her health.
On the last day he had stumbled. As he made his way with Holland up the gravel drive, naming each tree, left and right, a monarch counting up his loyal subjects, he saw ahead the front door, which represented victory with all its associations of ownership, warmth and entry: perhaps that was it. For Mr Cave wandered. He had a hybrid stringy-bark in his mouth and on the tip of his tongue, but did a double-take on the leaves—to this day he doesn’t know why—and correctly switched to the tree known for its fifteen different vernacular names, E. dealbata. Holland saw how close he had come to falling.
In the kitchen munching on a biscuit Mr Cave asked if Ellen’s illness could possibly be related to him. Holland spoke sharply, ‘I don’t think so. Nothing is one.’
So Mr Cave waited, anxious to help. Knocking on her door, for example, and bringing in tea on a tray could be seen as an example of his good intentions.
It is not normal for a body to remain horizontal; beyond a certain length of time it attracts concern. Death and burial (‘laid to rest’) are seen as the natural horizontal states, which is surely why the calculated falsity of perpendicular deaths, such as hangings, crucifixions, burnings at the stake, etc. produce such indelible shock.
News of Ellen’s continuing horizontality had a procession of concerned citizens calling and depositing homemade jams, boiled fruitcakes and flowers, and plenty of homespun advice. Few of them had been inside the dark homestead before.
Every morning the doctor arrived, but still he couldn’t give a name to the illness.
The Sprunt sisters took the opportunity of looking around Ellen’s room, and taking in the darkened lounge room, and the butcher’s wife began bossing Holland about in the kitchen, until he told her to clear out. Otherwise Holland didn’t know what to do. The postmistress sent a steady stream of cards, while Mrs Brain from the hotel dropped in two bottles of Adelaide stout. Someone else left a new calendar—another Ghost Gum, with sheep and the usual slack fencing.
In the town the only question asked of Holland concerned his daughter. Women admired Ellen; no difficulty there. They wanted her back on her feet. To have such a beauty in the district somehow reflected favourably on them.
To Mr Cave a woman lying in bed during daylight represented a complete mass of confusion and mystery.
Sometimes he and Holland sat by the bed together. Ellen showed no inclination to talk, turning slightly away when Mr Cave came forward with some extra-special eucalyptus oil, said to cure everything under the sun.
All Mr Cave could offer was patience, which is a variety of kindness.
One morning a pause stretched into an awkward two hours or more, no sign of Holland, so Mr Cave idly picked up the weeping milkmaid from the bedside table. He nodded thoughtfully, ‘Made in good old Austria…’
With blunt persistent fingers he tried turning the key. ‘Don’t…’ Ellen whispered.
There was a loud snapping sound: this man had broken the wind-up mechanism. And Ellen wept.
From then on Ellen’s decline became steeper. No one could do anything. She herself was a ribbon floating down from a height to the earth where it would rest, possibly forever. In her weakness Ellen felt a dangerous contentment.
She was losing her beauty.
The doctor now wondered whether to call in a distinguished colleague, unless he had migrated to America.
The butcher’s wife returned this time with other women and, with Mr Cave looking on, urged Holland to send the patient straightaway to Sydney. At this Ellen shook her head almost violently, and closed her eyes.
It was on
e of those illnesses without a name. She could only be brought back to life by a story.
• 37 •
Approximans
A CHAIR was placed beside the bed for men to sit and tell their stories.
The advantage of this was that from the story-teller’s chair they could roam with their eyes unhindered all over Ellen’s speckled face, which in normal circumstances reduced the strongest men to mumblers and shufflers.
Too old to do much about feminine beauty the doctor began by telling Ellen about some of his more curious surgical cases. It was as though he was talking to himself, not really addressing her, and Ellen too drifted off. After he left, Ellen almost fell to the floor as she went to close the French windows. Normally before returning to bed she would look at herself in the mirror, perhaps run a brush through her hair; but she went straight back and faced the wall.
The young locals no doubt at the insistence of their mothers sat in the chair and rattled off anecdotes about pig-shooting, and snakes of impossible length and ferocity they’d come across. Exaggerations, they have a useful part in the telling process. At least Trevor Traill launched into the adventures of his great-uncle, born so far inland he joined the merchant navy the day he turned sixteen, and went around the world. The family congregated when he returned. The first thing he did on staggering ashore, according to family legend, was to go down on his knees and kiss a pig.
It was the same with the very decent schoolteacher. He came in on tiptoe and read to her from a British history book, and when asked if she wanted more of the same tomorrow she appeared to shake her head.
Mr Cave had observed how Ellen stirred the moment a man sat in the chair and began a story; by her posture he could tell she was listening. He too would have to try something. If a story he told could bring her back to life their problems, whatever they were, were solved. He began racking his brains. It’s always easier telling a story in the first person. The going feels altogether smoother. It can produce a rushing frankness in the storyteller, as if the I was actually revealing some distinct inner truth.
Mr Cave took his place late one morning. He seemed to gather his thoughts, then he shifted on the seat.
‘I have a story. It concerns my fiancée.’
Ellen stirred. Pleats and creases (out of the corner of her eye), and still not a hair out of place, combined to make his words unusually direct.
‘I very nearly got married. This was some time back, in Adelaide. Her name was Marjorie.
‘Small mouth, wiry hair. She had a thing about cashmere sweaters, I don’t know why. Always asking me to get one whenever I went interstate. Father, a public servant. Department of Higher Education, if I’m not mistaken. It was some years back. Marjorie used to poke fun at my eucalyptic studies, and was always telling me to grow a moustache.’ Mr Cave let out a laugh. ‘She could get on her high horse! Chose to differ with her on a matter, forget what, and she clocked me one.
‘Otherwise we got on all right. For several years we saw each other a few times a week.
‘One day she said the following: “I’m almost forty, I like being with you. But my family think I should be married. Let me know on Tuesday. Otherwise I’ll have to find someone else.”
‘Words to that effect.
‘So there I was. On the Tuesday in question we had arranged to have a meal in the evening. Chinese, if my memory serves, in Hindley Street. We talked about this and that. Mostly I talked. She had her eye on the clock, couldn’t sit still for a second. At one stage I thought she would rush out of the room. I waited until a few seconds before midnight before giving the answer. She was relieved, then for some reason she was angry at me. Next minute she started to work out the invitations and so on.
‘I remember thinking her face had softened. Quite beautiful, I felt like saying.’
Ellen had turned from the wall.
‘This funny thing happened.’ Mr Cave had his arms folded. ‘Seemed simple enough at the time. A chap at the office put me onto this. Marjorie and I were seeing each other every day now. A lot of business to get through. I took her into a pawnshop, where they had a jar full of wedding rings.’
The story had been going smoothly enough, with suitable pauses. Ellen had her eyes open to the ceiling.
Mr Cave coughed. ‘Marjorie had her hand in the jar, bringing out rings, as if they were toffees. All looked the same to me. She apparently knew what she wanted. She had her hand still in the jar when she stopped, and seemed to be thinking. “No!” She suddenly pushed it away, “I want eighteen carats!” I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she bolted, left me standing in the shop, half a dozen wedding rings in my hands. Some years back.’
Ellen had her mouth open, not looking at him.
‘That,’ Mr Cave rubbed his hands, ‘is about the only story I can think of that’s happened to me.’
Holland who had listened to the end managed a laugh, ‘Eighteen carats? Why not twenty-four?’
He noticed Ellen had turned to the wall and was very still.
‘I think she could do with a rest,’ Holland winced. ‘You’d better go.’
• 38 •
Crebra
THE NARROW Leaf Red Ironbark: now there’s an employment of no-nonsense nouniness. This eucalypt has a straight trunk and hard, deeply furrowed bark, like a strip of dark-grey clay dried out after being ploughed. The leaves are noticeably narrow. What isn’t described is their ‘weeping habit’ (a technical term); that is, leaves drooping in a shimmer of real melancholy.
This suspended air of perpetual sadness would be of little consequence, except the Narrow Leaf Red Ironbark is one of the most common eucalypts on earth; certainly they crowd the woodland areas of eastern Australia, all the way up to the top of Queensland. The botanical name recognised this in the very beginning: crebra from the Latin ‘frequent’, ‘in close succession’.
Imagine the effect of such widespread statements of melancholy on the common mood. Needless to say it has permeated and reappeared in the long faces of our people, where the jaw has lengthened, and in words formed by almost imperceptible mouth movements, which often filter the mention of excessive emotions. It has shaded in khaki-grey our everyday stories, and when and how they are told, even the myths and legends, such as they are, just as surely as the Norwegians have been formed by snow and ice.
The eucalypts may be seen as daily reminders of the sadnesses between fathers and daughters, the deadpan stoicism of nature (which of course isn’t stoicism at all), drought and melting asphalt in the cities. Each leaf hanging downwards suggests another hard-luck story or a dry line or joke to wave away the flies.
Only a small number of other eucalypts, those pale and stately beauties that have achieved fame on tea towels, postage stamps and calendars, correct the general impression of melancholy, as put forward by E. crebra and some of the other ironbarks. They bring a glow of light to a paddock, a rockface, a footpath in the city: the two Salmon Gums standing in the traffic island between the university and the cemetery in Melbourne! It only needs a few. Theirs is a majestic statement on what is alive and spreading: continuation.
And there is a parallel nearby. It may not be exaggeration to say that the formidable instinct in men to measure, which is often mistaken for pessimism, is counterbalanced by the unfolding optimism of women, which is nothing less than life itself; their endless trump card.
It is shown in miniature by the reverence women have for flowers, at its most concentrated when they look up and in recognition of their natural affinity accept flowers.
• 39 •
Confluens
ON THE seventeenth day Ellen still lay in her room. No one had told a story to bring her back to life.
If anything Mr Cave’s story only made matters worse.
As far as he was concerned he had won Ellen’s hand according to the rules, the father looking over his shoulder every inch of the way. By any standard it was an impressive feat of memory and perseverance, a test so difficult Hollan
d had not imagined any man passing it. If Mr Cave was to set out and do it all over again he might well fall by the wayside. And now at the entirely unexpected outcome he was too baffled and sincere to protest.
‘Making myself scarce,’ he said in Ellen’s hearing, Mr Cave wandered out to be where he felt most comfortable, among what he knew about more than anything—eucalypts, in all their truly remarkable variety.
For the moment there was little Holland could do. He was left contemplating his knuckles, which had never held much interest, and now appeared larger than normal. It was enough to provoke a grim laugh, one which shot up his shoulders, and for Ellen to wonder what in her situation could be so funny.
It was a matter of waiting. Time as always held the answers, was Holland’s opinion. All things are processed by time. That was about all he could say to Mr Cave, a man he had grown to like, or at least respect. But at the first word, ‘Time…’, he let it go.
There were things he wanted to say to Ellen. But they were obscure and difficult; and he was different from his daughter.
Ellen liked it when he took his place in the chair. At night his cigarette glowed in the dark as parts of the house creaked back to a lower set of temperatures, and he went over again in a vague circular murmur the sad story of her mother, for she too had faded away in a gradual seepage of paleness.
The more Ellen listened the less she understood her father… She knew him better than anyone else, she realised, yet she didn’t really know him at all. Although she hardly knew the stranger—and there was every reason to connect ‘strange’ to him—Ellen realised she knew him better than her own father.
