The father Carlin was a rouseabout on some station up-country, where they had all last come from. They had a photograph of a weatherboard house on their own “station”, a small holding near Collarenebri, from which they had been burned out, losing every stick and stitch. For some months they had camped near the burned house, living on a few home-grown vegetables and Tom’s shooting. When a flock of parrots flew over, they had some good eating; otherwise, they ate rabbits when they trapped them. They were not popular with their neighbours, who took them for silly city people and their misfortunes for their just desserts; the country people did not like them eating the vermin either. Then Mother Carlin went back to Sydney to work in a lunchroom, where she still was and having a merry time with a proposal of marriage once a month, according to her own story; while the two boys and the girl, Jerry, Tom, and Rhoda, coming down country by car, had run out of petrol at Narara, and stopped there.
Here they led a gipsy life which suited them all, not liked by anyone in particular because they were “shiftless”. Rhoda Carlin was a big brown girl, fleshy, strong but lazy, who did a little cooking for the boys. She was about to marry the catch of the district, a middle-aged bachelor, heir to one of the largest mixed orchards, only son of a jealous mother.
“Is Tom there now?” asked Teresa finally, by way of making peace.
“Tom! That good-for-nothing,” murmured Ellen. “He’s upcountry—a boundary rider, near where his father is. He married a girl here—she works in the general store—or did. Now she’s going to have a baby. Such a shiftless lot as the lot about here—she married him without either of them having a penny. They got some room in the town. Jerry’s working at the sawmill up on the mountain. The crazy fool comes coasting down that mountain every sunset in that lorry of theirs that hasn’t any brakes. He’ll crack his neck any day.”
“What harm will that do?” Teresa sighed, and shrugged.
“Don’t you say that about any human being,” said Ellen. “How would you like anyone to say that about you?”
“What difference would it make?”
“Every blessed evening,” went on Ellen, meditating, “when I see the sun going down, I think of that shiftless boy crashing down that road.”
A pig ran round the house. “Those beasts,” said Ellen. “I hate this place, two people died here. Do you remember Gregg, the man they had here? He was taken away to the Cottage Hospital at show time, he died of eating in the water-melon contest. They picked him up just near the fence here. And they say they found a body in that paddock, they don’t know whose.”
The door stood fast shut against the wind. Through the uncurtained window, where they went to tap, they saw Rhoda and Roger, her rich friend, lying down together on the worn horsehair sofa, hugging each other. One leg of the sofa was made of a couple of wooden blocks. Ellen tapped. The pair turned up their red faces, rolled off the sofa looking proud of themselves, and came swaggering to the door, not making any attempt to smooth their hair or their collars.
“We’ll soon have another pair of lovers,” said the young woman. “Who’s that? Why, Tess! What a shame Tom’s upcountry. We could all sit on laps.”
“Tess wouldn’t do that,” simpered Ellen.
“She can have half my lap,” Roger said with the nasty smirk of the timid, unpractised bachelor.
“She can’t have half of Jerry’s lap,” said Rhoda with a roar of laughter. “I know who wants all of that.”
Ellen marched into the kitchen to put her rain clothes there. Rhoda followed her out and to Teresa’s surprise they did not start quarrelling, but at once began an intimate conversation in a low tone.
Teresa sat down and looked contemptuously at Roger. His hair was thinning, he had an egg-shaped head and the used look of a too-friendly house-dog. Of course, here, for this cabbage-patch, he was a catch. Rhoda was well off.
The two young women came in with tea and a tin of iced biscuits which they put on the table. The table was covered with an old red cloth and strewn with the remains of meals, with books, music, and other things.
Jerry was out in Gosford, the market town, trying to sell a pig and some produce; the market days were Monday and Thursday.
“He’s changing my books, too,” said Rhoda. “I’m such a lazy slug, I do nothing but read all day. What would your mother say to that?” she asked Roger.
Roger shifted and for a moment stiffened nervously.
“His mother simply loathes me,” said Rhoda.
“No, she doesn’t, Rhoda,” began the man.
“She does,” expostulated Rhoda, her flat contralto voice vibrating. “Oh, the time I went into her drawing-room! She received me in the drawing-room——”
They spent several hours, while the rain beat on the windows, waiting for Jerry and talking about Roger’s mother, about women’s health and what was the best time to conceive a boy or girl. Roger seemed delighted to understand, now at last, how things were in the world. It was Ellen who remained a little finicky, but she too had led a closed life and eagerly learned all she could from the tomboy. When it became really dark, they still sat talking there, not lighting a lamp; but Rhoda got up and sat on Roger’s knee, her arms round him. From time to time the two cousins heard loud kisses and the sound of nestling.
At last, Rhoda exclaimed: “There’s Jerry,” and jumped up to go and help her brother put the horse in. They no longer used their car, not having the money for petrol, and having no credit in the district.
A glow approached them, and in a minute a rain-wet, golden-brown, tired boy came into the room, holding the kerosene lamp under his face, so that the cleft in his chin was lighted up.
“Guess who’s here,” called his sister, putting her hands over his eyes.
The lamp wobbled. “Careful, Rhoda.”
“Guess who’s here!”
The strong smell of hot kerosene filled the room.
“You spilt some,” said Roger anxiously.
“Guess who’s here!”
“Ellen,” he said slowly.
“Right!”
She took her hands off, and when he put the lamp down on the table and was still dazzled by the light, she took him by the sleeve and dragged him over to the sofa where Ellen was sitting.
“The lovebirds,” said she. “Come, kiss, don’t be shy. Roger and I have been sitting here hugging and kissing for hours and Ellen has been sitting patiently waiting for you.”
Jerry bent tenderly over the blushing Ellen who half-rose in protest, with her stiffest little air.
“My tender white lily,” said he. “My sweet lily, have you been waiting for me?”
Teresa blushed to see her cousin put to shame by these hobble-dehoys.
“Will it kiss its sweetheart?” asked Jerry, still bending over her.
He took her limp, shapely hand, and raising it, kissed it. Rhoda clapped. “Oh, good work, and now a real kiss.”
“No, no,” said Ellen, rising in confusion. “No, no.”
She half-ran into the kitchen. Jerry followed her, paying no attention to the others in the room. They heard his cajoling tone and her frightened little voice. They heard several kisses.
“Ah-ha,” shouted Rhoda, “good work. Good egg!”
She turned and smacked the happy Roger several times.
“Oh, God, love is good,” cried she, now turning to Teresa. “What a pity Tom isn’t here, we could make it a party. Oh, can’t we get someone for Tess?”
At this moment Ellen reappeared, her hand lying in Jerry’s, while Rhoda hummed the wedding march.
“Down the ai-isle we must go, we must go, we must go,” sang Rhoda. Ellen snatched away her hand and came to stand near her cousin. Elfish, Jerry danced forward, seized Teresa by both shoulders and kissed her on the lips.
“Ah-ha, I wouldn’t do that to my lady, my lady is too standoffish,” said Jerry.
Teresa was trembling with shame. This was the first time she had ever been kissed and it was an affront, in a kind of debauch whi
ch she scarcely understood.
“You should not do that,” cried Ellen, her voice trembling.
“No, I should not do that, I should not do that,” mimicked Jerry. “Did that offend my pure white lily?”
“You devil!” cried Rhoda, slapping her thigh, and turning her laughing fat face to Roger, she said: “Isn’t he just a devil?”
“Are you hungry, Jerry? Hunger and love don’t go together they say.”
Jerry looked round the room carefully. “You haven’t eaten yet? Let’s have something.”
There was a long scramble in the two rooms, so that at the end of about twenty minutes, the brother and sister were able to produce some fried eggs, quite fresh, some rancid butter, stale bread and home-made jam, which they all ate hungrily, with newly-made tea.
At the table, Jerry said: “Tom’s baby was born today. She was all alone there, someone found her. There wasn’t even a basin in the house, not a rag. Do you think you could go down, Rhoda? I was there. I think someone ought to write and tell Tom, too, he never thinks of anything.”
“Boy or girl?” cried Rhoda at once.
“A girl,” said Jerry.
“What a shame,” said Rhoda.
“I didn’t see it,” Jerry continued.
“You’d have to see it to know if it was a boy or a girl,” said Rhoda with a nudge, looking for approval at them.
“Do you think Tom will like a girl?” asked Ellen.
“Tom always was crazy about girls,” said Rhoda loudly. “That’s why he got a girl. A man that’s mad over the girls always gets girls, he likes his wife too much. It means he has a feminine nature, his wife wears the pants.”
“I took her something to eat,” said Jerry, “but she didn’t feel like eating. I think there’s some old woman with her tonight. I like Hattie.”
“Tom must have liked her, or she wouldn’t be where she is today,” said Rhoda, roaring with laughter. “Well, when you get me into that state, Roger, it’d better be a boy.”
They went off again into the same discussion of how to get a girl or a boy.
After this meal, they did not clear up, but Jerry said: “Let’s have some music,” and went into the adjoining room to get his violin.
“It’s Tom’s violin,” he explained, bringing it back. “Tom’s real clever, he has a real good ear. He learned to play it in six correspondence lessons, and he taught me.”
“They’ve both got good ears,” said Rhoda. “Both those boys are wizards, not me—I’m tone-deaf, one letter from stone-deaf.”
“He plays real good,” said Ellen, to Teresa’s surprise. She had dropped unconsciously into her mother’s old idiom, which she criticized at home.
Standing by the lamp, the fiddle and bow held roughly, his face serious, Jerry was a handsome, romantic figure, slight, flushed.
“Listen to the storm,” he said, pausing with his bow lifted.
“The trees are just like violins too in this storm,” said Ellen bravely, in a thin, ladylike voice.
Jerry looked at her and, turning towards her with a grand gesture, began to play to her. It was unbelievable! Teresa stared wildly round at the others, cuddling, and at Ellen with her hands folded in her lap, sitting quite straight. Should she laugh to show that she knew it was a joke? They did not laugh.
When Jerry finished, they clapped, he grinned and Ellen said: “That was real pretty, Jerry,” once more quite softly, speaking as they did.
“Oh, yes, it was pretty,” said Teresa hastily, supposing it was a bizarre, stupid joke.
“Play again, Jerry,” cried his sister. “Play ‘The Last Rose of Summer’.”
“No, I’ll play ‘Mary, Gentle Mary’,” said the boy, and once more turning to Ellen, he began to drag his bow over the shrieking, spitting, hawking strings; not a note of the tune came out of them, though Rhoda’s voice could be heard humming it.
Teresa gave a hunted look round. They were brutally, devilishly spoofing Ellen and her, but mostly Ellen, who was flushed, and in a pretty admiration of the young man.
“Let’s go,” she said to Ellen.
“Oh, not now,” replied her cousin affectionately.
“Come out into the kitchen a minute.”
“What for?”
“I’m taking Ellen into the kitchen and don’t you follow,” laughed Jerry, pulling the willing woman to her feet and taking her out into the kitchen, with his hands still clasped in both of hers.
The two stayed out while the others kept shouting jokes, saying that it was darker still in the barn, and repeating that Ellen, that Missy, spent three hours in the old car with Jerry the night before. “Doing what, I wonder? Come on, tell us, Ellen, what went on in the old car? What is he like? Is he good?”
The couple stayed in the kitchen a long time, and then reappeared unconcernedly, as if they had just finished washing the dishes. Teresa was so upset that she started to go away several times, hoping that Ellen would put on her hat too. Ellen was not happy; she seemed to doubt, too, whether some part of this was not a mean trick, but she was too weak-willed to refuse them.
It was midnight when they left the house. The rain had stopped, but a high wind was blowing and clouds rolled fast over them.
“That old tree will come down on their heads, some night,” said Ellen, looking up.
Walking down the road, she pulled on her gloves and tied on her oilskin cap. Teresa seemed to hear through the wind yells of laughter from the Carlins’ sitting-room where Rhoda, Jerry, and Roger must be nearly killing themselves over the antics of the two old maids, and Ellen’s peachy bloom of love, come out on her soft cheeks, and the credulous, girlish look in her eyes when she glanced up at Jerry, with his howling violin.
“Never will I marry the neighbour’s son,” she said to herself. “What misery, what shame!” And all because Ellen had not the courage to look farther afield.
They were mounting the long hill at the top of which stood the Patons’ cottage, concealed by roadside eucalypts and a wood of turpentine. Ellen did not speak.
Just after they had passed the shuttered cottage in the wood, a human yell pealed out through the wood, marvellously loud, ringing through the air as if carried by the high airs and after two or three shouts, dying slowly, groaning away into the empty grass paddock beside them, as if tingling in the grass roots as they were treading on the neighbouring ruts. The young girl, in a paroxysm too great for fear, looked at her cousin, expecting some violent sign in her. Ellen lowered her head and trudged on against the hill. It was inconceivable! When she was opening her mouth to speak to Ellen, as if out of her own mouth, the cry pealed again, a little farther behind, but ringing tremendous, from the things on the land, from some martyred and bleeding field, or a giant old tree being murdered in the wood there. What a cry! And there again!
When it had died away again, Teresa said: “Didn’t you hear that yell? What is it?”
Ellen, bending her head a little farther forward, hurried her step.
“Ellen, Ellen,” she panted, “didn’t you hear that awful cry?”
A terrible thought went through her head like lightning, that she was mad, or had herself uttered the cry; that was why Ellen did not answer, but pressed on. Was she asleep? Was this a nightmare? What was it, that that timid woman, hearing this thing on a country road at night, yes, at any time, in bright sunlight too, would not start and run? Was it herself?
“Ellen?”
“Come along,” said the woman.
“Didn’t you hear it?”
There was a breathing-space, then. “Do come along,” said the woman.
“What is it? Oh, Ellen, what is it?”
“You don’t know, so don’t worry,” muttered Ellen.
Teresa was not afraid, but the cry was too great to be that of hunting, pursuing things. Who was concealed in that shut house? Was it one of the inaudible sounds of creation, suddenly by a freak made audible to them? How did Ellen, that stupid thing, know how to take it, if so? Was Ellen also a
sensitive, a living soul? Was it the howl of empty Creation, horrified at being there with itself in its singleness? Or is it the cry of the chase I am on, said the young girl? At any rate, if the cry is here, I must be off; where the cry is, that lonely, dreadful cry, I must be off. Tomorrow I will go over the hills yonder.
When they came in, Aunt Teresa was sitting up for them, gentle and affectionate. She kissed her daughter warmly and when Ellen’s door was shut, she kept her niece talking a few minutes.
“Are you going walking tomorrow?”
“Oh, yes.”
“In the morning or the afternoon?”
“Oh, straight away. I only want to take a few days, then I must look for a job.”
“What kind of a job?”
“As a typist.”
“Ellen was such a good typist, the best in the Department, and much good it did ’er,” said the aunt.
Teresa was silent.
“Do you know which way you’re going?”
“No, I don’t know the way but I’ll take the road that goes straight across the creek.”
“Do you think that goes to ‘Arper’s Ferry?” she asked. “You don’t mind walking off by yourself? It seems your friends went in groups.”
“What friends?”
“Your university friends.”
“I have no university friends, I just heard of them through a Mr Crow, who is there.”
Aunt Teresa pressed her, and she asked: “What can happen to me?”
Aunt Teresa looked at her with haunted eyes, almost angry, “They can tear you.”
“What do you mean?” asked the girl, startled. She thought her aunt referred to the murderers lurking possibly round Harper’s Ferry. What did her aunt murmur in reply? Horrible things, old wives’ tales. Teresa took no notice of this bogy talk but said she would be off in the morning, she could not wait, she had little money.
For Love Alone Page 19
