Somers then mentioned Jaz’s proposition, of a red revolution first.
“I know,” said Jack. “It may be so. He’s one of your sly, crawling devils, Jaz is, and that seems to be the road nowadays. I wouldn’t mind egging the Reds in, and then slapping them clean out into nowhere. I wouldn’t mind at all. But I’m bound to follow Kangaroo’s orders, so I’m not bothering my chump over Jaz’s boodle.”
“You don’t care which way it happens?”
Jack looked at him sideways, like the funny bird.
“No,” he said, with an Australian drawl. “So long as it does happen. I don’t like things as they are, and I don’t feel safe about them. I don’t mean I want to feel safe as if nothing would ever happen. There’s some sorts of sport and risk that you enjoy, and there’s others you hate the thought of. Now I hate the thought of being bossed and messed about by the Old Country, or by Jew capitalists and bankers, or by a lot of labour bullies, or a Soviet. There’s no fun in that sort of sport, to me, unless you can jolly well wipe the bleeders out afterwards. And I don’t altogether want the mills of the British Empire to go grinding slowly on, and yourself compelled to do nothing but grind slowly with ‘em. It’s too much of a sameness altogether, and not as much sport as a tin Lizzie. We’re too much mixed up with other folk’s business, what’s absolutely no fun for us. No, what I want is a cosy, lively little Australia away from all this blooming world-boost. I’ve no use for a lot of people across a lot of miles of sea nudging me while I handle my knife and fork. Leave us Australians to ourselves, we shall manage.”
They were interrupted by Harriet calling for Somers to come and rescue the tea-towel from the horns of a cow who had calmly scrambled through the fence on to their grass. Somers was used to the cow: she had scrambled through the Coo-ee fence long before the Somers had ever walked through the gate, so she looked on them as mild intruders. He was quite friendly with her, she ate the pumpkin rind and apple parings from his hand. Now she looked at him half guiltily out of one eye, the kitchen towel hanging over the other eye. She took it quite calmly, but had a disreputable appearance.
“Come here,” said he. “Come here and have it taken off. Of course you had to poke your head into the bush if you thought there was a towel on it.”
She came mildly up and held her head while he disentangled the towel from her horns. Then she went calmly on, snuffing at the short, bitten grass for another mouthful, and twitching leaves off the stunted bushes.
So they were, the cows, so unafraid. In Cornwall, Harriet said, the cows had always sniffed in when she came near, and then breathed out heavily, nnh! nnh! as if they did not like the smell of human beings, breathing out against her, and backing. And that had scared her. But these cows didn’t do that. They seemed so calm. They fed over all the bush, the unoccupied grassy lots above the sea, among the unbuilt streets. And they pushed in among the trees and bushes where the creek came in. And then at dusk a boy would come on a cream-coloured pony riding round and driving them in, scaring a sort of crane or heron bird from the still waters of the marshy creek-edge. Then the cows walked or trotted placidly home: so unconcerned. And the bird with the great, arched grey wings flapped in a low circle round, then settled again a yard or two from where she was before.
So unconcerned. Somers had noticed a pair of fishing birds by the creek, queer objects nearly as big as ducks, perched at the extremity of a dead gum-tree, above the water. They flew away at his coming, but while he stood looking, they circled with their longish necks stretched out and their wings sharply flicking in the high air, then one returned and sat again on the tree, and the other perched on another dead tree. The near one looked sideways at him.
“Yes, I’m here,” said he aloud.
Whereupon she did the inevitable, turned her back on him and he no longer existed for her. These ostriches needed no sand. She so far forgot him as to turn sideways to him again, so he had her in profile, clutched grey like an old knot at the tip of the stark, dead grey tree. And there she performed queer corkscrew exercises with her neck in the air. Whether it was she was getting down a last fishbone in her gizzard, or whether she was merely asserting herself in the upper air, he could not tell.
“What a fool you look,” he said aloud to her.
Then away the birds rose. And he saw a seedy, elderly man in black, in a long-skirted black coat like a cast-off Methodist parson, spying at him furtively from behind the bushes on the other side of the creek. This parson-looking weed carried a gun, and was shooting heaven knows what. He thought Richard Lovat a very suspicious bird, and Richard Lovat thought him the last word in human weeds. So our young man turned away to the sands, where the afternoon sea had gone a very dark blue. Another human weed with a very thin neck and a very red face sat on the sand ridge up which the foam-edge swished, his feet wide apart, facing the ocean, and tending a line which he had in some way managed to cast out into the low surf. An urchin, barefoot, was pottering round in silence, like a sandpiper. The elderly one made unintelligible noises as Somers approached. The latter realised it meant he was not to catch with his foot the line, which reached out behind the thin fisherman, covered with sand. So he stepped over it. The brown, barefoot urchin pottered round unheeding. He did not even look up when the elder made more unintelligible sounds to him.
My father is a fisherman, Oh a fisherman! Yes a fisherman! He catches all the fish-e-can.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays were the library nights. When you had crossed the iron foot-bridge over the railway, you came to a big wooden building with a corrugated iron roof, standing forlorn at an unmade corner, like the fag-end of the village. But the village was an agglomeration of fag ends. This building might have been a temporary chapel, as you came at it from the back. But in front it was labelled “Pictoria”, so it was the cinema. But there was also a black board with gilt letters, like a chapel notice-board, which said “School of Arts Library”. And the Pictoria had a sort of little wing, all wood, like a little school-room. And in one section of this wing was the School of Arts Library, which the Somers had joined. Four rows of novels: the top row a hundred or more thin books, all Nat Gould or Zane Grey. The young women came for Zane Grey. “Oh, ‘The Maid of Mudgee’ is a lovely thing, lovely” — a young woman was pronouncing from the top of the broken chair which served as stool to give access to this top row. “Y’aven’ got a new Zaine Greye, have yer?” She spoke in these tones of unmitigated intimacy to the white-moustached librarian. One would have thought he was her dear old dad. Then came a young railway man who had heard there was a new Nat Gould.
“But,” said Somers, as he and Harriet went off with a Mary E. Mann and a George A. Birmingham, “I don’t wonder they can’t read English books, or only want Nat Gould. All the scruples and the emotions and the regrets in English novels do seem waste of time out here.”
“I suppose,” said Harriet, “if you don’t have any inside life of your own it must seem a waste of time. But look at it — look!”
The object she bade him look at was a bone of contention between them. She wanted to give five pounds to have four posts and an iron chain put round it, and perhaps a bit of grass sowed inside the enclosure. He declared that they’d probably charge ten pounds for the chain alone, since it was Australia. And let it alone. It was of a piece with the rest. But Harriet said she couldn’t leave the place till she’d had something done to it. He said she was an interfering female.
The object was the memorial to the fallen soldiers. It was really a quite attractive little monument: a statue in pale, fawnish stone, of a Tommy standing at ease, with his gun down at his side, wearing his puttees and his turned-up felt hat. The statue itself was about life size, but standing just overhead on a tall pedestal it looked small and stiff and rather touching. The pedestal was in very nice proportion, and had at eye level white inlet slabs between little columns of grey granite, bearing the names of the fallen on one slab, in small black letters, and on the other slabs the names of all the men
who served: “God Bless Them”. The fallen had “Lest we forget”, for a motto. Carved on the bottom step it said, “Unveiled by Grannie Rhys”. A real township monument, bearing the names of everybody possible: the fallen, all those who donned khaki, the people who presented it, and Grannie Rhys. Wonderfully in keeping with the place and its people, naive but quite attractive, with the stiff, pallid, delicate fawn-coloured soldier standing forever stiff and pathetic.
But there it stood, a few yards from the corner of the corrugated Pictoria, at the corner of the fag-end road to the station, like an old milk-can someone had set down and forgotten: or a bran new milk-can. Old rags of paper littered the ground at the base, with an old tin or two. A little further back was a German machine gun, also looking as if it had been scrapped and forgotten. Standing there, with its big metal screen-flap, it looked exotic, a thing of some higher culture, demoniac and fallen.
Harriet was dying to rescue the forlorn monument that seemed as if it had been left there in the bustle of removal. She wanted to enclose it. But he said: “Leave it. Leave it. They don’t like things enclosed.”
She still had in her mind’s eye an Australia with beautiful manorial farm-houses and dainty, perfect villages. She never acquiesced in the UNCREATEDNESS of the new country, the rawness, the slovenliness. It seemed to her comical, for instance, that no woman in Australia would carry a basket. Harriet went shopping as usual with her pretty straw basket in the village. But she felt that the women remarked on it. Only then did she notice that everybody carried a suit-case in this discreet country. The fat old woman who came to the door with a suit-case must, she thought, be a visitor coming to the wrong house. But no. “Did you want a cabbage?” In the suitcase two cabbages and half a pumpkin. A little girl goes to the dairy for six eggs and half a pound of butter with a small, elegant suit-case. Nay, a child of three toddled with a little six-inch suit-case, containing, as Harriet had occasion to see, two buns, because the suit-case flew open and the two buns rolled out. Australian suit-cases were always flying open, and discharging groceries or a skinned rabbit or three bottles of beer. One had the impression that everybody was perpetually going away for the week-end: with a suit-case. Not so at all. Just a new-country bit of convention.
Ah, a new country! The cabbage, for example, cost tenpence in the normal course of things, and a cauliflower a shilling. And the tradesmen’s carts flew round in the wilderness, delivering goods. There isn’t much newness in MAN, whatever the country.
That old aeroplane that had lain broken-down in a field. It was nowadays always staggering in the low air just above the surf, past the front of Coo-ee, and lurching down on to the sands of the town “beach”. There, in the cold wind, a forlorn group of men and boys round the aeroplane, the sea washing near, the marsh of the creek desolate behind. Then a “passenger mounted”, and men shoving the great insect of a thing along the sand to get it started. It buzzed venomously into the air, looking very unsafe and wanting to fall in the sea.
“Yes, he’s carrying passengers. Oh, quite a fair trade. Thirty-five shillings a time. Yes, it seems a lot, but he has to make his money while he can. No, I’ve not been up myself, but my boy has. No, you see, there was four boys, and they had a sweepstake: eight-and-six apiece, and my boy won. He’s just eleven. Yes, he liked it. But they was only up about four minutes: I timed them myself. Well, you know, it’s hardly worth it. But he gets plenty to go. I heard he made over forty pounds on Whit Monday, here on this beach. It seems to me, though, he favours some more than others. There’s some he flies round with for ten minutes, and that last chap now, I’m sure he wasn’t up a second more than three minutes. No, not quite fair. Yes, he’s a man from Bulli: was a flying-man all through the war. Now he’s got this machine of his own, he’s quite right to make something for himself if he can. No, I don’t know that he has any licence or anything. But a chap like that, who went through the war — why, who’s going to interfere with his doing the best for himself?”
CHAPTER 11. WILLIE STRUTHERS AND KANGAROO.
Jaz took Somers to the famous Canberra House, in Sydney, where the Socialists and Labour people had their premises: offices, meeting-rooms, club-rooms, quite an establishment. There was a lively feeling about the place, in spite of various down-at-heel malcontents who stood about in the passage and outside on the pavement. A business-like air.
The two men were conducted into an inner room where a man sat at a desk. He was very dark, red-faced, and thin, with deep lines in his face, a tight shut, receding mouth, and black, burning eyes. He reminded Somers of the portraits of Abraham Lincoln, the same sunken cheeks and deep, cadaverous lines and big black eyes. But this man, Willie Struthers, lacked that look of humour and almost of sweetness that one can find in Abraham Lincoln’s portraits. Instead, he was suspicious, and seemed as if he were brooding an inner wrong.
He was a born Australian, had knocked about the continent, and spent many years on the goldfields. According to report, he was just comfortably well-off — not rich. He looked rather shabby, seedy; his clothes had that look as if he had just thrown them on his back, after picking them off the floor. Also one of his thin shoulders was noticeably higher than the other. But he was a distinct Australian type, thin, hollow-cheeked, with a brightish brittle, red skin on his face, and big, dark, incensed-looking eyes. He nodded to the two men as they entered, but did not speak nor rise from his desk.
“This is Mr. Somers,” said Jaz. “You’ve read his book on democracy.”
“Yes, I’ve read it,” said Struthers. “Take a seat.”
He spoke with a pronounced Australian accent — a bad cockney. He stared at Somers for a few seconds, then looked away.
He asked the usual questions, how Richard liked Australia, how long he had been there, how long he thought of staying. The two didn’t get into any easy harmony.
Then he began to put a few shrewd questions concerning the Fascisti and Socialisti in Italy, the appropriation of the land by the peasants, and so on; then about Germany, the actual temper of the working people, the quality of their patriotism since the war, and so on.
“You understand,” said Somers, “I don’t pretend to give anything but personal impressions. I have no claim to knowledge, whatever.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Somers. I want your impressions. What they call knowledge is like any other currency, it’s liable to depreciate. Sound valuable knowledge to-day may not be worth the paper it’s printed on to-morrow — like the Austrian krone. We’re no slaves to facts. Give us your impressions.”
He spoke with a peculiar kind of bitterness, that showed passion too. They talked about Europe for some time. The man could listen: listen with his black eyes too. Watchful, always watchful, as if he expected some bird to fly suddenly out of the speaker’s face. He was well-informed, and seemed to weigh and judge everything he heard as he heard it.
“Why, when I left Europe it seemed to me socialism was losing ground everywhere — in Italy especially. In 1920 it was quite a living, exciting thing, in Italy. It made people insolent, usually, but it lifted them up as well. Then it sort of fizzled down, and last year there was only the smoke of it: and a nasty sort of disappointment and disillusion, a grating sort of irritation. Florence, Siena — hateful! The Fascisti risen up and taking on airs, all just out of a sort of spite. The Dante festival at Florence, and the King there, for example. Just set your teeth on edge, ugh! — with their “Savoia!” All false and out of spite.”
“And what do you attribute that to, Mr. Somers?”
“Why, I think the Socialists didn’t QUITE believe in their own socialism, so everybody felt let down. In Italy, particularly, it seemed to me they were on the brink of a revolution. And the King was ready to abdicate, and the Church was ready to make away with its possessions: I know that. Everything ready for a flight. And then the Socialists funked. They just funked. They daren’t make a revolution, because then they’d be responsible for the country. And they DAREN’T. And so the Fascisti, seei
ng the Socialists in a funk, got up and began to try to kick their behinds.”
Mr. Struthers nodded his head slowly.
“I suppose that is so,” he said. “I suppose that’s what it amounts to, they didn’t believe in what they were doing. But then they’re a childish, excitable people, with no stability.”
“But it seems to me socialism hasn’t got the spark in it to make a revolution. Not in any country. It hasn’t got the spunk, either. There’s no spunk in it.”
“What is there any spunk in?” asked the other man, a sort of bitter fire corroding in his eyes. “Where do you find any spunk?”
“Oh, nowhere,” said Richard.
There was a silence. Struthers looked out of the window as if he didn’t know what to say next, and he played irritably with a blotter on the desk, with his right hand. Richard also sat uncomfortably silent.
“Nowhere any spunk?” said Struthers, in his flat metallic voice.
“No,” said Richard.
And again the uncomfortable silence.
“There was plenty of spunk in the war,” said Struthers.
“Of a sort. And because they felt they HAD to, not from choice.”
“And mayn’t they feel they HAVE to again?” said Struthers, smiling rather grimly.
The two men eyed one another.
“What’ll make them?” asked Richard.
“Oh — circumstances.”
“Ah well — if circumstances.” Richard was almost rude. “I know if it was a question of WAR the majority of returned soldiers would join up in a month — in a week. You hear it over and over again from the Diggers here. The war was the only time they ever felt properly alive. But then they moved because they hated the Germans — self-righteously hated them. And they can’t quite bring it off, to hate the capitalist with a self-righteous hate. They don’t hate him. They know that if they themselves got a chance to make a pile of money and be capitalists, they’d JUMP at it. You can’t work up a hate except on fear. And they DON’T fear the capitalist, and you can’t make them. The most they’ll do is sneer about him.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 362
