The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  Below him a youth with a leather apron was lowering the lax body of a girl on to the lower step. His companion, a young man with curly hair, was bending forward with his hands on his knees, watching.

  ‘The youth holding the girl spread his legs wide to steady himself.

  His lips were pressed together and he held his breath as he bent to her weight. He rested her gently on the lower step then placed an arm around her shoulders so that he could hold her in a sitting position. Her head fell forward so that her chin rested on her chest. Her arms hung uselessly by her sides and her hands, palms uppermost, lay with curled fingers on the step beside her.

  On the pavement near her feet was a red purse.

  The youth with the leather apron was relieved to see the carrier. He looked helplessly up at him. The act of looking upward wrinkled his forehead so that he appeared to be suffering pain as he spoke.

  ‘She was just standing here,’ he said. ‘She was just standing here when she slipped down of a heap. She took the knock while I was looking at her.’

  A frail woman with glasses hurried up and placed a brown paper parcel and a string bag on the pavement near the girl’s feet.

  ‘Lay her out flat,’ she said quickly. ‘Put her head back; right back. Keep a grip of her.’

  The youth with the leather apron did all of this. He was anxious to obey her. His face showed relief that responsibility had been taken from him.

  ‘Get some water,’ said the woman. She was looking anxiously at the girl.

  ‘Water!’ said the youth urgently, gesturing to his companion.

  The young man with the curly hair looked up and down the street in indecision. ‘Water,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, water. That’s right.’

  ‘In the bank,’ said the carrier, glad of the opportunity to contribute something constructive.

  The young man sped into the bank.

  The girl reclined with her head resting on the edge of the top step. It was thrown back so that her curved throat faced the youth in the leather apron and gave a sacrificial aspect to her thin body.

  Her eyes were closed in her white face and she scarcely breathed. Her legs, stretched from step to pavement, rested on the two high heels of her shoes. A ladder in her stocking had been stitched with brown cotton.

  The frail woman, bending above her, looked at her face with a tense compassion.

  On the pavement across the roadway people collected. They stood in solemn groups. Some talked with their heads close together, while others stood in silence and looked unwaveringly across at the girl.

  On the pavement in front of the bank more collected. A boy with a bicycle stood on one leg with the other hanging loosely across the bar of the machine. He chewed gum and looked steadily at the girl. He was experiencing a pleasurable excitement and a feeling of importance. His work as a messenger was dull and uninteresting. This was life.

  A stout man stood near the boy. He had a pipe in his mouth and his air was that of a philosopher witnessing the confirmation of some concept he had formulated in the past.

  He struck a match and held it to his pipe. From above the flame he watched the girl. He withdrew his pipe from his mouth and blew a cone of smoke which dissolved between the heads of the people. From the depths of his reasoning he announced a conclusion to those who were watching.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it.’

  No one took any notice of him, although the boy resting on the bicycle looked at him with sudden interest, his inexperience making him eager for words of explanation and enlightenment.

  The young man who had entered the bank came back with a glass of water. He handed it to the frail woman who took it with an exclamation of relief.

  ‘Hold her head up,’ she said to the youth with the leather apron.

  The youth moved quickly, concentrating on his movements as if a crisis had arisen and he must make no mistake.

  He grasped the head of the girl between his hands and held it erect so that it faced the group of silent people. It faced them like an accusation, expressionless and sad, with an utter absence of emotion, with a calm they felt it should not possess.

  The frail woman held the glass to the girl’s lips but her teeth were clenched and the water ran down her chin.

  The carrier’s face twisted with distaste.

  ‘She won’t drink,’ said the frail woman. She had reached the stage where her experience was inadequate to guide her further. She looked up at the carrier and in her glance she transferred to him the responsibility she could no longer shoulder.

  The carrier was seized with a sudden incapacity. He felt trapped and helpless in the face of decisions that were demanded of him.

  ‘Bathe her forehead,’ he said lamely, the echo of some direction he had read or heard in the past instructing him.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ said the man with the pipe. ‘I’ve seen it.’

  A stout woman forced her way through the people. The basket of groceries she carried rested on the forward bulge of her body. She placed the basket on the pavement and stepped to the girl’s side with the tread and determination of a warrior about to do battle.

  ‘When they faint you want to wrap wet rags round their wrists,’ she said to the frail woman as if the statement was final and absolute.

  She then turned and faced the group, attributing to them an unspoken demand that she justify her statement and her intrusion.

  ‘I’ve had ’em,’ she said. ‘I’ve been out to it many’s the time. I know.’

  Her manner changed and became professional. She clucked like a hen with chickens as she turned to the girl.

  ‘’Ere, I’ll fix ‘er.’

  The youth with the leather apron was suddenly filled with relief. Tension left him and he became cheerful. He smiled and said:

  ‘Yes, you do it, Missus. You women know more about it than us men. You take over.’

  He addressed the group, feeling that now apprehensiveness had left them all, interesting information would be welcome. He said:

  ‘She was just standing there. I thought she looked crook. I said to Harry, “She looks crook, don’t she?” and I said to her, “You look crook.” Then she just slipped down like. She was lucky she didn’t bash her head on the bricks.’

  The boy with the bicycle appreciated this information which clarified the incident and enlarged the story that he would soon be repeating with dramatic additions he had already created. He felt a desire to establish a link with the speaker and to supply evidence of his importance as a witness.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I was here second.’

  The fat woman had taken the glass from the frail woman. She dipped her pudgy fingers into the water and clouded it with dirt.

  ‘There now, deary. There now, deary.’

  She rubbed her fingers across the girl’s forehead and round her neck. Wet strands of hair stuck to the girl’s cheeks.

  ‘Hold her head up now.’

  The youth with the leather apron bent and placed his hand at the back of the girl’s neck.

  The fat woman threw the remaining drop of water over the girl’s face.

  Still supporting the girl, the youth twisted his head and looked at the carrier.

  ‘I said to me cobber here, “She looks crook, don’t she?” and I walked over and said, “Anything wrong?” and she just slips down like.’

  The fat woman suddenly noticed the girl’s purse on the pavement. She seized it in her wet hand, gave it a quick look, then dropped it down the neck of the girl’s blouse. She placed her large, sodden face close to the girl’s and said loudly:

  ‘I put ya purse down ya chest so nobody don’t take it from ya, deary. Don’t worry. It’s down ya chest.’

  ‘There’s no thieves here, Missus,’ said the man with the pipe pompously.

  ‘That’s what you bloody well think,’ said the fat woman.

  From resentment her expression became solicitous again.

  ‘Don’t worry,
deary.’

  She turned to the young man who had brought the glass of water and said commandingly:

  ‘Here. Get me some more water.’

  He darted into the bank. The fat woman patted the girl’s cheeks. ‘There, there, deary. Ya purse is down ya chest, deary. Ya purse is down ya chest.’

  The group in the street had grown. It extended to the kerb. The carrier looked at them with warmth in his glance. He felt akin to them all. They were united by compassion, and he wanted to talk to them, to tell them this.

  The young man returned with the water and handed it to the fat woman.

  ‘Come on now. ‘Ere’s a drink of nice clean water,’ she said as she held the glass to the girl’s lips.

  The girl’s eyelids flickered and she stirred. The crowd became very still.

  ‘’Ere, deary. Come on now.’

  The girl opened her eyes, then seeing the people she closed them in a momentary panic. She drank the water with her eyes closed. She was afraid to open them, afraid of what she had seen.

  ‘Just lie quietly, deary,’ said the fat woman. ‘Lie still and get ya strength.’

  The girl again opened her eyes. She smiled weakly and tried to rise.

  ‘Steady now, deary. You’ll be all right in a minute. Ya purse is down ya chest. Steady does it.’

  With the aid of the fat woman and the youth with the leather apron the girl rose to her feet. She stood unsteadily with one arm round the fat woman’s shoulders. She shook her head as if to clear her vision and said:

  ‘I feel better now. I’ll be all right in a minute.’

  The people began to walk away. The carrier crossed the street and climbed into the cabin of his ancient truck.

  He waited a moment and watched the girl. She had thanked the fat woman and had walked to a tram stop. She stood there leaning against a brick wall.

  The carrier started his truck and swung the wheel. He pulled up in front of her.

  ‘Would you like me to drive you home?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘I would. I feel queer.’

  He opened the door and the girl climbed in beside him.

  ‘I was standing in the sun and then I began to feel funny,’ she explained. ‘I couldn’t reach the wall in time.’

  ‘That’s how it gets you,’ said the carrier. ‘It comes on you sudden, doesn’t it! Where do you live?’

  ‘Wellington Street.’

  ‘Past Johnstone Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  At Wellington Street he asked:

  ‘Where to now?’

  ‘The house with the brown fence.’

  He stopped in front of the gate.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done. . . . It’s a horrible thing to happen to one. Those people . . . those terrible people looking. . . . I felt awful. But you were kind; you were different.’

  ‘That’s all right, that’s all right,’ said the carrier hastily. He was confused.

  He watched her walk to the gate feeling in some strange way that he was a traitor. She opened the gate then turned to wave to him.

  ‘I say,’ he called, leaning out the cabin door. ‘I was one of those people, you know.’

  My Bird

  It was not a silent darkness. Away out over the flat swamp water came rustles, splashes, quacks and the quick flap of wings being stretched and folded again.

  Swans cried out and were answered, and plovers, flying low over the water, called to birds standing on the sandhills that divided the swamp from the bay.

  The smell of water weeds and reeds and thrusting roots hung over the swamp and the tall marram grass growing on the bank.

  It was just after midnight, the morning of the opening of the duck season. The day before, Dan Lucey, an inspector of the Fisheries and Game Department, had arrived at Werribee in a utility truck. He had gone into the swamp lands during the afternoon and carried out an inspection before preparing for the arrival of the shooters that night.

  The swamp lands were divided into two areas, one of which was a sanctuary for native birds.

  Shooters were forbidden to enter the sanctuary, and here the water birds were allowed to breed and live in peace.

  What was left of the swamp lands was known as the Main Swamp. This section was thrown open to shooters for three months of the year, a period known to sportsmen as ‘The Duck Season’.

  The main swamp was divided from the sanctuary by a levee. During the open season, shooters could roam the main swamp as they pleased but beyond the levee they must not go. This wall of earth was a boundary between two countries, one of which was given to war and the other to peace.

  It was Dan Lucey’s task, on this opening day, to keep shooters off the sanctuary and to prevent the slaughter of protected birds. During the close season all ducks were protected but when, by official proclamation from the Office of Director of Fisheries and Game, the duck season opened, those birds that were losing the struggle to survive were still forbidden game and men who shot them were open to fines and the confiscation of their guns.

  Dan Lucey stood beside his truck watching the headlights of cars coming in to the turn-around beside the swamp where shooting was allowed.

  For almost a year he had guarded these ducks against men with guns.

  He had patrolled the swamp lands on moonlight nights, listening and watching, sometimes running in a crouch from shadow to shadow towards the report of a forbidden gun.

  He had waded waist-deep through tangled places where the nests were, had drawn aside the reeds and seen the eggs warm from birds he had startled. He had watched the wild ducks leading flotillas of quick-paddling ducklings across smooth patches of water and had seen their first heavy, ungainly flight.

  ‘It’s good to look at ducks flying,’ he had once said. ‘I like to see them coming in to land at sunset.

  ‘It’s great to hear the whistle of their wings then look up and see them swerve away from the movement of you. Ducks are good, you get to love them.’

  Dan Lucey had been born on the Murrumbidgee and here, where the slow river flowed between high clay banks, and gnarled red gums leaned over the water, he had spent his childhood. As a man he was tall with a blackfellow’s grace of movement and a face that was at peace with the bush, but, as a child, barefooted and brown, he had not yet come to terms with his surroundings. He had been restless and questioning and pursued some illusive revelation, some answer, some final discovery that he felt awaited him around each river bend, behind each tree or beyond each rise.

  He was a searcher, lifting pieces of dry bark where centipedes shrank back from the light, thrusting his hand into hollow limbs where possums slept or parrots nested and wading through lignum swamps, parting branches and peering or standing silent with his face turned to the sky where the whistle of a driving wing still lingered.

  Had there been, in his home, books in which poets sang the truth of things, or great writers wrote inspiringly, he would have sat cross-legged beneath the belah-tree in his back yard, and the book upon his knee would have been as wings to him.

  But there were no books, and, in the flight of birds his need of beauty found its answer, in the strength and power of scarred red gum trunks, deep-rooted in the earth, he felt the lift of spirit that comes to the man of books when he reads great literature. The drama and poetry he knew passed through no interpretative pen before enchanting him; it came to him from its source, pure and clear like a bullock bell.

  He knew the river birds well. He had gazed on the egg, the splintering shell, the powder-puff young ones, the fat squeakers still unable to fly. He had watched the close-plumaged, grown ducks coming down wind with the long sun of evening upon them. They had come in with swerve and bank and flash of jewel and he had held his breath to the singing within him.

  Yet, he had, with other boys, fired shanghai stones at resting birds, but his shots were wide. It was the twang of rubber and the soaring stone that delighted him.

&nbs
p; Later, proud with the responsibilities of a new manhood, he had carried his birthday-present gun through the swamps, and had slain ducks as he went. He had tied the necks of bleeding birds to his belt and had come home with tales of marvellous shots he had made.

  But he couldn’t kill without a feeling of shame. With a draggled bundle of dead ducks at his belt the flight of those still living was always a withdrawal from him. He was left earthbound and solitary, weighed down by his betrayal.

  He had put away his gun, only taking it out to clean it or to feel the satisfaction of squinting down its gleaming barrel before returning it to its brackets on the wall.

  When he finally came to the city looking for work he went straight to the Fisheries and Game Department, where he was engaged as an inspector. He was eager and enthusiastic, inspired by a vision.

  Now he stood in the darkness thinking of these things, his vision gone.

  The drone of engines, like a requiem, moved with the cars that stretched in a broken line from Werribee to Melbourne. The cars thrust out feelers of light towards those ahead of them. They lurched over ruts of swamp lands, and the dust-laden beams shot up and fell again, illuminating tussocks of grass and striking glitters from the chromium of vehicles rocking ahead.

  On a circular area flattened in the grass on the bank of the swamp, they came to rest. They crowded together in dark clusters divided by passageways along which those arriving nosed their way with whining gears, searching for a space in which to park. They moved into these places then stopped, their blazing eyes flicked out, their engines became silent.

  More came, and more. Men carrying torches or hurricane lanterns jumped back and stood aside while groups moved past. In all those hours of darkness the sound of engines never ceased. A thousand cars came in that night, three thousand shooters stepped from them and moved off into the dark, their gun barrels gleaming in the headlights of the cars still seeking a resting place.

  Legs moved in the light of swinging lanterns, passing and repassing each other while their shadows made frantic sweeps over the grass. Silhouetted men swore softly, called to companions, asked questions, proffered information.