The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

‘Plenty,’ says his girl and draws away from him.

  Sam pulls up among the trees and says, bossy like, ‘Hop out. We’ll only go a little way.’

  ‘Hop out yourself,’ says this girl, and the girl on my knee says: ‘What’s he think we are?’

  I kiss her and she moves her head about trying to get away. She breaks loose and gasps: ‘Cut that out.’

  Sam begins to paw the girl in front and Ted’s girl squeals. Ted says: ‘What’s a squeal or two between friends?’ and the girl on my knee says, ‘He’s a character.’

  ‘Nice man!’ says the girl between us, sarcastic like. She hasn’t got a bloke and is a grape on the business. She has a flat sort of face.

  Sam’s girl starts telling Sam off. ‘You’re with no low-heels here,’ she says. ‘I’m no piano for your hands. Play your dirty music on the steering wheel.’

  ‘Nice turna words your cobber’s got,’ I says to my girl.

  ‘Yes. She’s a character,’ she says.

  Flat Face says: ‘Nice men, I must say.’

  ‘Shut your trap, you!’ says Sam, turning to her.

  I don’t like it. I says, ‘Break it down, Sam.’

  ‘He doesn’t know enough to break down his whisky,’ says his girl, looking at him with her nose wrinkled as if he smelt of Scotch.

  ‘So what!’ says Sam.

  ‘Work it out yourself,’ says his girl.

  ‘It’s just too bad we’ve run out of petrol,’ says Sam.

  The girls all look at him with their mouths open trying to make out the strength of it.

  ‘Out of petrol!’ I says. ‘Why, you got four gallons in town.’

  ‘Funny, that,’ says Sam, lifting his lip at me. ‘She must be eatin’ up the juice. We got none now.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ says Flat Face. ‘Do you expect us to walk home?’

  ‘I expect nothin’ from you lot,’ says Sam and laughs.

  ‘He’s only jokin,’, I say to my girl.

  ‘Jokin’, is it?’ says Sam. ‘You dames hop it. Us blokes want to do some quiet drinking.’

  The girls all talk at once. The big girl in front tells Sam off and then some. ‘If I had a face like yours I’d go round fightin’ all the bull-dogs about the place. One look at you and the milk curdles. Walk home! I’d love to.’ And she gets out. They all get out. So do I.

  ‘I’m walking with you,’ I says.

  ‘Don’t be a mug, Pete,’ says Sam. ‘Hop back.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ I says.

  Ted gets worried. ‘Go easy, Pete.’

  ‘You go to hell, too,’ I says.

  The girls gather round arguing. Flat Face leans on the back guard, listening.

  Ted says: ‘You girls ain’t sports. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘You thought we was easy,’ says the girl that had been sitting on my knee.

  ‘By hell! I didn’t,’ I says, thinking about her.

  ‘Let’s be friends,’ says Ted.

  Flat Face pokes her head round the side. ‘The only way to be friends with you is to sleep with you,’ she says. She is a grape on the business on account of not having a bloke.

  ‘Sleep with you!’ snarls Sam. He looks her up and down then laughs.

  ‘Bugs always shun a clean bed,’ says Flat Face.

  ‘What are we standing here for?’ says the big girl. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘We’ll get a train from Frankston,’ I says.

  ‘Don’t be a mug, Pete,’ says Sam.

  ‘You go to hell!’ I says. ‘Come on, girls.’

  ‘You’re a character,’ says the girl that had been sitting on my knee.

  We sets off through the scrub leaving Ted and Sam knocking over a bottle. Flat Face makes us walk through the scrub. She says she don’t want them to pass us on the road.

  We make Frankston in an hour. Are the girls limping! I’ll say! I am a deener light on the fares. I says: ‘I don’t like putting you girls back a bob, but I’m that much light. Pll let you have it back tomorrow if you can raise it now.’

  Flat Face supplies it. ‘It’s worth it for the experience,’ she says.

  I gets the tickets and the girls sprawl on the carriage seats when the train arrives.

  The big girl starts to talk: ‘These blokes with money are all the same,’ she says. ‘They exploit you, see. I know. I’ve read what you call it in books. Wait till we control the means of reproduction,’ she says.

  ‘We wouldn’t need men then,’ says the girl that Ted had.

  ‘What!’ says the big girl.

  ‘Havin’ babies an’ that,’ she says.

  ‘Babies, nothin’!’ says the big girl. ‘I’m talkin’ about what blokes with money do. That guy thought we were sodas, see. Just because he had a car and we had nothin’.’

  I likes this girl. ‘You put it like what things are,’ I says. ‘I feel like going back and hopping into the cow.’

  ‘That’s what you call “The Spirit of Revolt”,’ says the big girl. ‘It’s a good sign.’

  ‘I’m full of signs like that,’ I says.

  ‘It’s too late now,’ says the big girl. ‘We all should have hopped into him.’

  ‘While youse was all talkin’,’ says Flat Face, ‘I did a spot of revoltin’ myself. I sawed through his back tyre with a hack-saw I got off the floor. The tube came out like a b’lloon.’

  Gripes! We gets a surprise. Then we starts to laugh. Laugh! We nearly bust ourselves.

  ‘It came out like a balloon,’ roars Flat Face.

  We rolls about laughin’.

  Hell! I enjoyed sleeping with Flat Face that night.

  First Kill

  The car appeared over the pine ridge. It came very quietly and stopped as it topped the rise.

  There were three men in the car. An old man with a face the companion of quiet stone and hot sunshine sat in the centre. The youth on his left held a rifle. The driver, a man in his thirties, was a product of the cities. They all gazed eagerly before them searching the clumps of belah and mulga for signs of kangaroo.

  The driver gave an exclamation and pointed. Two kangaroos were resting in the shade of a pine-tree at the foot of a sandhill. They sat drowsing in the still heat. The larger one scratched his body with his small front paws. They sat facing each other. The sandy soil at their feet was pierced with thin, dry grass and springy with old leaves.

  They heard the driver’s exclamation and raised themselves erect, both heads turned, watching. They were still as the tree that sheltered them.

  ‘Quick! Steady!’ said the old man. ‘Take your time. Two hundred and fifty yards, I’d say.’

  The tall youth, brown and eager, fumbled with the rifle. He slipped back the safety catch and alighted. His shirt sleeves were rolled above his elbows. He stood very erect and steady, his cheek tense against the rifle stock. The barrel projecting before him wavered a little uncertainly then froze into pregnant stillness.

  ‘Take your time,’ said the old man.

  He slid his fingers into his vest pocket searching for cigarette papers. The driver sat tautly at the wheel, his face twisted as if in anticipation of some hurt. The sharp report released his held breath and his shoulders sank.

  For a fraction of a second after the report the kangaroos remained motionless. The speeding bullet left a wake of shrill sound.

  The larger kangaroo leaped startledly forward. His mate doubled low and bounded away between the pines in a frenzy of speed. The buck tore the ground with his toes as he turned to follow her.

  She led him towards the thicker pines on the ridge.

  The youth lowered his rifle. He looked perplexed and turned to the old man inquiringly.

  ‘You hit him all right,’ said the old man. ‘Keep your eye on him.’

  For fifty yards the larger kangaroo held the distance between him and the flying doe, then his speed lessened. She drew away from him. He staggered. Suddenly he leaped high in the air, striking with his forepaws as if death had closed with him. He twisted
his body and landed off his balance. He crashed heavily on his side, rose again and sprang sideways thrusting desperately to ward death’s hands from off his vitals. He shook his head from side to side, frantic in a terrible darkness.

  The old man sat forward in the car.

  ‘He’s fighting,’ he called. ‘You’ve got him. He’s fighting.’

  The youth ran towards the animal. The wind of his speed billowed the shirt tucked beneath his belt. He reloaded the rifle as he ran.

  ‘Sit tight,’ said the man at the wheel.

  He started the car and sped after the youth. He was stirred with an excitement-fear, like one who witnesses an accident. He drove recklessly. He swerved in and out of belah and mulga. The car lurched over old limbs returning to the soil. He skidded round the spiked butts of wind-slain pine-trees and cut across a clearing to intercept the youth.

  ‘Look out!’ called the old man. ‘Look out!’ and again, ‘Look out!’

  But he was enjoying it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The kangaroo, weak, but as if scatheless from the desperate struggle just ended, again bounded away.

  ‘See the blood,’ called out the youth, looking towards the car. His face was eager and excited. ‘It’s pouring out his leg. It’s all over him.’

  ‘Give him another,’ yelled the old man. ‘Sink another into him.’

  Again the sharp report. The kangaroo faltered but kept blindly on. The youth followed running. The car lurched behind him.

  In a thick clump of pine filled with cool shadow the kangaroo stopped, stood swaying, gazed back at his pursuers with hurt bewilderment.

  The youth raised his rifle and fired a third time. The kangaroo lurched forward, scrabbled the earth a moment as if it would conceal itself beneath the soft soil.

  The car stopped. The driver and the old man alighted. They joined the youth and stood beside him looking down at the animal. The kangaroo’s eyes were open. One of its powerful legs was saturated with blood. Blood dripped from its nose and slid down the stems of the wild grass. Beneath the soft, warm fur on its narrow chest could be seen the dying beat of its heart.

  ‘That second shot ripped clean through its belly!’ exclaimed the youth. ‘Ripped clean through its belly and it made no difference. Why was that? He just kept going. Look, you can see where it went through.’

  ‘They take some stopping,’ said the old man rolling a cigarette. He licked the paper. ‘Well, that’s your first kangaroo,’ he went on. ‘You’ll get scores more before you go home. Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Gee! yes,’ said the youth. ‘This is great. It’s good. When I get used to the rifle I’ll be better. This is great. I like this.’

  Tch! Tch!

  I couldn’t sleep at night. I had pains behind the eyes. . . . I had pains in the stomach. . . . I had pains in the chest.

  So I became an out-patient at the Melbourne Hospital.

  There were at least thirty of us. We sat on benches before a clinic door at which we gazed like a theatre audience at a drop curtain just before an entertainment. We knew that behind that door specialists in the ills of our bodies were busy sharpening knives and threading needles in anticipation of a furious attack on our carcasses.

  Anyway the wharfie behind me put it something like that.

  ‘They’re in there,’ he said, ‘just waitin’—ready to hack into us.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m crook,’ he said.

  ‘How crook?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t digest nothin’. I go all of a rumble and when I’m on the hook I blow out. We’ve been stowin’ wool,’ he added.

  ‘I get pains behind the eyes,’ I said. ‘I can’t eat anything either.’

  ‘Does your head ache when you bend down to lace your boots?’ the woman with the broken nose asked me. She was sitting on my left.

  ‘I’ll say it does,’ I said.

  ‘You have sinus trouble,’ she said promptly. ‘Sleep with a hot water bottle against your head. It’ll relieve you.’

  ‘It wouldn’t relieve his guts,’ said the wharf labourer.

  ‘Tch! Tch!’ said a thin woman with spectacles.

  ‘Duodenal ulcer,’ murmured a dark man two seats back. ‘It goes with infected antrums.’

  I stood up so that I could see him. ‘What!’ I exclaimed. I had the wind up.

  ‘My sister,’ said a woman with a red jumper, ‘had both her antrums taken out. She’s never been the same woman since.’

  ‘Get out!’ said a man behind her, rudely. ‘You can’t cut them out. They’re holes.’

  I sat down and communed with my stomach.

  ‘This duodenal ulcer,’ said the wharfie anxiously. ‘How do you know you got it?’

  ‘You only feel comfortable when you are full,’ said the man two seats back.

  ‘What! Shicker?’ exclaimed the wharfie.

  ‘No. After meals,’ said the man.

  ‘That’s me,’ said the wharfie sighing. ‘By hell it is! I always feel good after meals.’ He lapsed into troubled thought.

  ‘Your stomach has been infected by your antrums,’ the woman with the broken nose breathed into my ear. ‘Do your ears crack when you blow your nose?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘That’s very dangerous,’ she warned me. ‘Don’t do it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised her.

  ‘Both your antrums are gone,’ she informed me.

  ‘You don’t say,’ I said holding my head towards her anxiously.

  ‘As for the duodenal ulcer, they’ll cut that out.’

  ‘What’s that?’ exclaimed the wharfie, overhearing the remark. ‘You hang on to ya guts, boy.’

  ‘Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.

  ‘I know a bloke —,’ began the wharfie.

  A man with melancholy eyes, sitting behind me, tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘If you want to cure your antrums inhale a twenty-five per cent menthol in tincture of benzoin compound three times a day. Put a few drops in boiling water.’

  ‘Wrap a towel round your head,’ added the dark man two seats back.

  ‘Sniff it gently at first,’ said the asthmatical youth beside him.

  ‘They’ll never operate on me,’ growled the wharfie, rousing himself to defiance. ‘Hey!’ he said to the woman in the red jumper who was discussing ulcers with the asthmatical youth. ‘Ain’t there any cure without your guts being cut into?’

  ‘Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.

  ‘There’s a diet for it,’ said a fat man with a scar on his cheek. ‘I’m on it. I’ve got it here.’

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ said the wharfie.

  The fat man took a type-written sheet from his pocket and commenced to read.

  ‘Poultry or sea-foods of any description must not be eaten.’ He looked up. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘they contain the protamine protein which plays hell with the lining of your belly.’

  Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.

  ‘What’s that?’ I interjected, turning from the woman with the broken nose who was prophesying a slow death for me.

  ‘Stop talkin’,’ ordered the wharfie gesturing silence. ‘This is what we gotta eat.’

  ‘It says you must have all the vitamins,’ went on the fat man.

  ‘Vitamin E?’ asked a cynical youth from the rear.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good!’ said the youth.

  ‘We’ll blast the hopes

  Of Marie Stopes

  With good old Vitamin E, me lads.

  With good old Vitamin E.’

  ‘Every morning at ten o’clock,’ continued the fat man, ignoring the youth, ‘you must drink a glass of pineapple juice and every afternoon at three, a glass of orange juice. All vegetables must be puree.’

  ‘Ha!’ The wharfie smacked his knee and laughed sardonically. ‘I like that. Ha!’

  H
e enlarged his audience by turning and including those in the rear in a sweeping glance calculated to convey to all of us his contempt for the fat man’s diet.

  ‘I like that. Can you see me drinking pineapple juice with the Heeler-up on my tail?’

  ‘Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.

  The wharfie, suddenly depressed, addressed me: ‘I wish to hell I had nothin’ wrong with me. I’d be a happy man if the doctor in there said: “You’ve got nothin’ wrong with you.”’

  ‘What good would that do, if you are still sick?’ I said.

  ‘What! I’d feel good once I knew there was nothin’ wrong with me.’

  ‘You’ve got something wrong with you all right,’ said the woman with the broken nose. ‘I don’t like your colour.’

  ‘Christ!’ breathed the wharfie.

  ‘Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.

  ‘How do you mean, colour?’ asked the wharfie respectfully.

  ‘You’re yellow,’ snapped the broken-nosed woman thrusting her face at the wharfie as if her remark were an accusation.

  ‘By hell I’m not!’ protested the wharfie. ‘I’m frightened of no one. One gets the wind up in front of these doctors,’ he explained to me in a quieter aside, ‘But that’s natural. This dame reckons because a bloke shakes, he’s yellow.’

  But I was thinking of myself. ‘I’m crook,’ I said.

  ‘Giddy?’ questioned the broken-nosed woman raising her brows and looking sideways at me.

  ‘A little,’ I said.

  ‘Get on a strict diet as soon as you can or that ulcer of yours will end in a haemorrhage,’ she said.

  ‘Look!’ I said to the wharfie. ‘What do I want to go in to those doctors for? I know what’s wrong with me. They’ve told me here. I’ve got sinus trouble. Both my antrums are gone. To cure that I’ve got to sleep with a hot bottle on my head and never lace my boots. I’ve got to inhale a twenty-five per cent menthol in tincture of benzoin compound three times a day in boiling water. I’m to inhale gently with my head under a towel. I’ve got a duodenal ulcer caused by infected antrums. Eventually I’ll have to get it cut out, after which I’ll never be the same man again. In the meantime all the vegetables I am to eat are to be puree. I’m to drink pineapple juice in the morning and orange juice in the afternoon. I must go on this strict diet to prevent a haemorrhage. If I eat sea-foods I’m up against the protamine protein. I’m going home. We’ve got corn beef and carrots for dinner and, boy, am I going to have a feed.’