The Missing Heir

by Kylie Tennant

  Coming across the fields towards me was a little trail of people who thought at first I was a young boy and asked if I had got my dole. I explained that I didn’t get the dole and wasn’t a boy. The soup kitchen was in the Presbyterian Hall just across the road and when they saw my feet they set about bathing them, inviting me to stay.

  My father had been giving me ten shillings a week while I was staying at Naomi’s place. Ten shillings was as far as he could go in parting with money. But I had some money. Whether my mother had provided it or I had won it in some literary competition I cannot now remember. I may even have packed a few gross of Reflecto. I was accustomed to having no money. Before the Reflecto caper the Parent had paid me two shillings for pressing his tennis flannels every week. I don’t know what he did when I was not home because my sister — now a wage-earner in her own right and my mother refused to touch them, saying he should send them to a dry-cleaning firm.

  So I was perfectly happy peeling vegetables in the soup-kitchen and sleeping on the verandah of a nice married couple (with little children) who in better times had worked in the woollen mills in the valley. I was filling notebooks. I went into a meeting of the Lithgow unemployed and offered to throw a brick through a bank window to draw attention to their plight. This offer was refused with shocked horror. I argued that they needed more publicity and that was the way to get it. Also it would give me valuable copy if I were arrested. They regarded me, as I found out later, as an agent provocateur sent by the police.

  I always felt that banks should be more of a target. I don’t mean for thieves. They have enough of those. But for public disapproval. Banks, to my innocent view then, were institutions which lent money to farmers in good times and, as in the present not-so-good times, foreclosed the mortgage, selling the farm to the next comer. I was about on the level of a medieval peasant: money, I felt, should not breed and there was something wrong with those who made their living breeding money. Even now I feel the people who scratch around for a higher rate of interest on their investments — my poor father did it all his life — are misguided. As I never had any money — I gave it to Roddy if I earned any later and he left it in a jar on the mantel-piece when we were first married — my disapproval of banks showed my ignorance of their workings. I never went into one, the way a good atheist never goes to church.

  Nowadays I am our bank manager’s despair. Poor Henry is driven quite mad by odd sums I have deposited and forgotten. My tax agents — kind loving people — are in the same case. They want to know why I have not entered paper under expenses and I reply that I picked up whole reams of paper on the local tip. I sometimes buy envelopes but I hate seeing paper going to waste. The Chinese are the same. My mother’s efforts to make me buy clothes ended in her dragging me into shops and running into debt buying them for me. She loved to dress me in fetching garments and high-heeled shoes. But people always gave me clothes and shoes. They still do. Roddy firmly saw to it that I bought clothes when I was married to him. He became quite unpleasant if I did not, and gradually wore away my prejudice against clothes I bought for myself.

  While I was at the Bowenfels soup-kitchen I also went to the head office in Lithgow of the railways and interviewed their manager — a most unresponsive man when he learnt I had plans for jumping their trains. I had hoped I could get some good advice from him but the man was — as I said — unresponsive. Sensitive on the subject.

  After a few days when my feet healed I bade farewell to the soup-kitchen where I had been so happy and my good friends Wal and Betty on whose verandah I had slept. With lifts I arrived two nights later at the large station out of Molong belonging to Marge Foster’s parents. She later married my solicitor, Jack Helmrich, and was a great friend of my sister’s at school. I suppose what the Fosters had was a station in the old style. The housekeeper gave me dinner — as the boys and their father were away at the local races — and assigned me a bed. Late that night I was awakened by a deputation with a lamp. ‘Is Ted there?’ I asked. ‘Oh Ted, this is Kylie, Doffie’s sister.’ I went back to sleep again.

  There were murmurs of discussion from the livingroom but I was tired and did not bother. Nowadays people drop in on me in the same way and there is always a bed.

  I had known the patriarch of this large family, whom I had met at Manly, where the Fosters had a house, as a large silent man. But he was a man, I now discovered, after my own heart. We had an interesting conversation about the gold-mine he was working at the back of his property and he showed me some of his find. He seemed to be very concerned about me. ‘But I have plenty of money,’ I assured him. The ten shillings from the Parent was still intact. He forced a five-pound note on me and because I did not want to offend him I accepted it, because he and I got on so well together.

  I made enquiries about trains from Molong and there was one that it would suit me to jump at midnight. Ted drove me into town in the late afternoon and I settled down happily to sleep on a hard wooden bench. There was no one at the station. I had been warned that a gaol-bird had escaped from the local lock-up and the police were on the watch for this escapee. Would I please be careful? ‘Sure, sure. I’ll avoid him, boys.’ So I tilted my hat over my face, used my knapsack as a pillow and slept heartily.

  I awoke to the sound of voices. It was a young man and his girl. I think he may even have been the porter. ‘I intend to jump this train at midnight,’ I told them. ‘Have you any advice about how to go about it?’ This young porter was a mine of advice. He explained the signals the whistle would give when it shunted into the siding, two whistles for this, one for that. Just as he completed his instructions a nervous man who announced himself as the gaol escapee loomed up and asked the same advice. My informant repeated it for him.

  It was raining hard. As soon as the train drew in and began fussing about the siding I made my way to it and climbed aboard what I discovered to be an open truck. I was followed by the escapee who seemed to be even more of a mug than I was — if that was possible. ‘This is no fucking good,’ he complained and set out to find a covered waggon. I carefully marked the one he chose and avoided it, finding one with a tarp over it farther to the rear. Undoing the rope I climbed in and settled, and the train set off.

  Soap! I could smell it. Ever since that advertising office I had had a distaste for scented soap. Now the packages of it viciously fell on me whenever with a jerk and a groan the train stopped. It kept stopping. At the big junction a voice from below complained that I had left the rope untied (‘mate’) and that the shunter would notice it. I grunted something. When daylight came I decided I had had enough of cartons of soap tumbling on me so when we pulled into a siding I untied the knot of the tarpaulin and slid down to the railbed. I went off across country, the driver and fireman waving cheerfully to me as I left. I don’t know what happened to the unfortunate prisoner. He was probably recaptured. Anyone more inept than I was deserved to be.

  It began to rain again and I made my way towards a machinery shed on a farm. A cattle dog came out but seemed to be more anxious to find a dry place than to attack me so we settled down together, I stroking his ears. The farmer came out and politely invited me in; his wife plied me with scones and tea daintily served on a starched embroidered cloth. I learnt from them the tragedy of the farmers around those parts. No farmer I have ever met but hasn’t been on the edge of ruin and these people were right over the edge. Their desperation was pathetic. I did not like to get out my notebook but remembered. ‘Some day,’ I said to myself, ‘some day I will do something about this. Bloody banks again!’ I can’t remember whether they bathed my feet. Was it on this trip or another that I called in to ask a night’s lodging at the police station at Cullen Bullen (‘You must have a spare cell’) and the sergeant and his wife bathed my feet? Of course they fed me and talked to me. They found me amiably sitting with their daughter when they returned from the picture show and at first nearly had heart failure, thinking I was a man. However, they recovered and the sergeant’s wife and I
were friends immediately. I had their best cell for the night, as I assured them I didn’t want to put them to any trouble, and very comfortable it was.

  I have always liked policemen. As a child I was taught they were there to help. If people are sorry for you they will not be afraid of you and thieves have been helpful and friendly to me, never savage. I was never worth robbing, as they assured me. General Booth had the same idea in the London slums. He said if he met a very dangerous man he let him do him a favour.

  I took the train from this little siding outside Coonabarabran and arrived respectably, telephoning Roddy to meet me at the bridge. The first thing he did was to throw my beloved hat into the Castlereagh. He said it reminded him of my jealous suitor whom I had left in Sydney.

  He picked me out a camping place on a hill at the edge of the town and insisted that while I was there I should see Timor which was eight miles out, a place with curious rocks. I walked out to Timor and found it beautiful. Roddy got a lift out with a local skin buyer and we got a lift in next morning with the parents of one of his pupils who lived nearby. I found another camping place by a creek about a mile or so out, at Nundah on the Timor road, which I preferred to the hill Roddy had found. A boy who went to his school rode up on a mare that afternoon and we tasted the mare’s milk — we agreed it was rather watery and sickly. A likeable boy. By this time — in the way of country towns — news of my presence seemed to have spread. I realised I was ruining Roddy’s reputation. A local girl was making a set at him and he didn’t really care for her but didn’t know how to get rid of her. He brought her out and we became friends at once. She was sturdy country girl, Mary, and she worked at the hotel where Roddy was staying. He was so lonely it was a shame. His only friends were the two Greeks who owned the café and, of course, the rector of the Church of England. Roddy had almost decided to give up schoolteaching for the priesthood and become a theological student. It was just his bad luck that I showed up when I did because he would at least have become a bishop with his talent for administration. But being the solitary Red in the town was getting him down. At least I was relieved that he didn’t start talking about suicide and seemed fitter than he had been in Sydney. Not so strained.

  It was, of course, obligatory among radicals to sleep with whomever you intended to marry so I slept with Roddy on the bank of the Castlereagh in the moonlight. Very romantic, but by bad luck a moth got into my ear. It flutted and whirred and took all my attention. I did not think it would be polite to say: ‘Could you stop seducing me because I have a moth in my ear?’ so I carried on, doing my best. The damned moth continued whirring and keeping me awake in the so-romantic moonlight long after Roddy had gone to sleep. Some people, I thought glumly, might think that moth was trying to warn me. Whenever I have presented to me what might look like an evil omen I immediately do whatever anyone sensible might be warned against — for instance by a moth in their ear. When we were cooking breakfast over a campfire and Roddy was picking grass seeds out of his trousers I said thoughtfully: ‘Roddy, what about marrying me?’

  ‘Done,’ Roddy responded promptly and began making plans to see Bill Butler, the rector, about the ceremony. I reflected that if I didn’t find it satisfactory I could always divorce him. After all, I had only known him on committees. But he had decided to marry me long before and he always persisted until he succeeded in what he set out to do. I had meant to suggest that I should go back to Sydney and maybe in the Christmas holidays … ? But Roddy had it all thought out. He promptly transferred me to the hotel and into the only skirt I had brought with me which didn’t look well with my sandshoes. Mary lent me her white dress for the ceremony and a white hat around which I twisted a wreath of white wild roses. Bill Butler, the rector, said he ought to have taken the wall off the church — not such a hard job as it sounds — to accommodate the overflow congregation. Roddy had suffered from nosebleed most of the day as he often did at times of stress. Roddy and I drove by taxi to Binnoway the same night and I caught the early morning train to Sydney. He was in such a dither that he forgot he had all my remaining money in his breastpocket; so that when I arrived in Sydney I had to borrow enough to get home from the girl in the ticket office on the Manly wharf. In the train a kindly fellow passenger, the only one in my carriage, had bought us a corned-beef sandwich each. This man and I remarked approvingly on the amount of mustard. Later we realised we both had food poisoning and were racked with stomach cramps. It was a risk you took on that train, particularly in hot weather. There was one refreshment room at Binnoway with checked linoleum tablecloths and a morose elderly lady behind the tea urn. So I did not swagger in the back door of Hillside but tottered in feebly to the loving embraces of Naomi and my mother.

  * * *

  Marriage is like turning a corner and coming on an undiscovered landscape. It is even more complicated if you shift from a city to what is, for you, unknown territory in the scrub. I was so ignorant that I did not know that when strangers said ‘G’day’ in passing, you were supposed to reply ‘G’day’. A country girl I knew later went through King’s Cross courteously saying ‘G’day’ to everyone she passed, and was hurt by their not returning her greeting. In Coonabarabran, people commented unfavourably on my manners for the first couple of months. However, by the time Christmas came I was learning — but not much.

  Coonabarabran was a sheep town in the Warrumbungles, with cedar trees down the main street, a café kept by two Greek brothers who were our great friends, a small church where we were married, a school where my husband taught — and a conviction that Coonabarabran was the hub of the universe. It was a two-pub town — pretty big.

  On the outskirts was an Aborigines’ camp, and there was a government station for Aborigines some miles along the road to Gunnedah. The travelling unemployed camped on the show-ground, though the men with bicycles and turnouts camped by our fence and put their horses in our paddock. When we moved from the hotel to an old house on the bank of the Castlereagh River I had some Christmas cards printed with ‘The Traveller’s Rest’ as our address, and my city friends thought I had married a man who kept a hotel. No such luck. But we always had someone who needed a free meal, a handout, the relief of telling his life story.

  I married Lewis Charles Rodd on 21 November 1932. My twenty-first birthday would be in March. When the Reverend William Butler asked if he should omit the word ‘obey’ from the marriage service Roddy snapped: ‘Do you want me to laugh out loud in the middle of the service? Of course, leave it out.’ I was a little miffed at this assumption of authority. I should have been the one to make the decision. I was deeply suspicious of marriage — who would sign a lifetime contract when they would be an entirely different person in ten years’ time and so would their partner? The contract should be renewable in each space of ten years. I stayed married to Roddy until he died of cancer at the age of seventy-three in 1979. I always cited Mary as a girl with more enterprise than I had. She married three times.

  Roddy often raised his fists to Heaven and decided to divorce me — particularly if the car fanbelt broke or the radiator leaked. I came to realise that instead of blaming God for any accidental occurrence he blamed me and this was gratifying in a way—Providence and myself being on the same level. I knew that when he had some sleep and a good meal he would recover.

  We were both born on the same day, 12 March, and he was seven years older than I was. People used to say: ‘Oh, you’re both Pisces. That means you’re very much alike.’ There never was a bigger mistake. Roddy was sardonic, introverted, a meticulous planner. I was a lazy drifter who had to be prodded. Roddy’s letters to me were addressed ‘Dear Pony’.

  He was collecting the works of Arctic and Antarctic explorers and insisted I read them. Many of these people ate their dogs. I would sooner not go to any pole if it meant eating a trusted companion who had pulled a heavy sledge all the way. I termed Roddy’s valuable collection ‘dog-eaters’.

  He was also interested in the Catholic tradition of the Churc
h of England and later, in the Church Standard, conducted a learned war with Dr Rumble, the Roman Catholic protagonist, over that period of English history when Latimer and Cranmer were honing the keen edge of doctrine. He loved church choirs and plainsong which sounded to me like the howling of distant timber wolves. He couldn’t sing a note and delighted in taking me to church and elbowing me in the ribs during the hymn. ‘Sing up,’ he commanded. So I would raise my voice in volume above the more decorous singers and when they found someone was singing very loudly they did the same.

  When I returned to Coonabarabran after my journey to Sydney to bring some clothes we lived at the hotel. I found Roddy was writing a thesis on the Influence of the Bulletin on the Short Story Canon in Australia, so I took it over. I must have read nearly all the stories ever published in the Bulletin. In the years to come I wrote half a dozen other literary theses for deserving friends who had no literary bent. In those days mathematics teachers and all kinds of teachers who wanted promotion had to write literary theses. Then they learnt them off and were given three hours to reproduce them on paper as well as pass an exam on their subject. It seemed an excessively mandarin way of obtaining advancement. You could be a superb teacher but unless you could write a thesis you could never rise a grade. So I helped. I wrote theses on Thackeray, Chesterton, Conrad and Drinkwater. I also later got into shape Roddy’s thesis on the use of psychoanalysis to education.