The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  For Joe and me life changed from that day. We looked with suspicion at people and we couldn’t do a piss in front of each other because we knew that if anyone saw us looking at the other’s prick that was the end of him.

  Joe said, ‘No more swimming in the river now with no clothes on. I wish this had never happened.’

  ‘So do I’, I said.

  But it was Freckles Jack who suffered the most. Every kid would like to have spoken to him when he came back to school, but everyone was afraid. Joe and I used to sneak chances to talk to him when we got a chance. We patted his dog and asked him how it was going. He seemed to hold himself back a bit, but one day he said, ‘You see, I thought I was being smart. No one ever looked at me or took any notice of me. I think they thought I was soft or something. Then one day I was having a leak in front of Miss Armitage’s and a kid came up—it was lousy Fred from Garvoc—and he said, “You’re game pissing here, aren’t you?” and I thought, by hell, I am game; and then I started pissing in front of girls and that was the end of me. You can’t do that.’

  ‘No’, I said. ‘You can’t do that.’

  Miss McAlister

  Splinter Robertson was a groom and he worked for Miss McAlister. Mr McAlister owned Barji Station where he bred Polwarths and Miss McAlister was his daughter. She knew more about Polwarths than anyone else in Australia but, as Splinter said, ‘Who gives a bugger for Polwarths anyway?’

  Splinter was as sharp and thin as they come. He was always looking for a place to sit down or a post to lean against. He had good hands and sat well on a horse but he wasn’t much chop on a bike. Every Sunday morning he rode his bicycle four miles from his home out on the Mortlake road so as to be ready to meet Miss McAlister at the Turalla church when she came trotting up in her hooded Abbot buggy. She drove two white ponies, a perfectly matched pair that father said would cost a lot of money.

  Miss McAlister was well bred, of course, but she had to take the knock from Mrs Carruthers who had a pedigree as long as your arm and came to church in a car driven by a chauffeur. If you lined Splinter up beside the chauffeur you would have to give the chauffeur the verdict.

  Splinter sat under a gum-tree while Miss McAlister was in church. He’d sit there flicking pieces of gravel on to the roadway and sometimes Joe and I would sit beside him with our legs spread out on the grass. Splinter could talk if you got him going. Like he’d say, ‘Foxes are bad lately. The boss shot four last week.’ Then we’d talk about foxes till church came out and Miss McAlister started nodding and talking to different women round the church porch.

  Splinter would jump up and bring the ponies out of the churchyard. He’d lead them up beside the pole and Joe and I would pull the reins through the hames and buckle them into the bits.

  We’d clear out then. We didn’t like to be seen hanging around when Miss McAlister came out. She was thin, plain and severe and the less you had to do with her the better.

  During the winter rains she still drove to church. She didn’t give a bugger for the weather. She met the hot north winds of summer just the same. Her face was like the prow of a Viking ship and it drove into the wind or rain like as if God was using them to try her out.

  She didn’t come out of it too good. Her skin was like harness leather and she was no oil painting as far as looks were concerned. Splinter reckoned that her youngest sister had all the looks her parents could muster up for them both. She was a laughing, round-faced, happy girl. She didn’t come to church for some reason. Splinter didn’t know why. She rode a lot round the station. She rode good horses but you never noticed them. You could only look at her.

  She’d been away for a long time being educated in Melbourne and her friends were mainly Melbourne people. She often rode through Turalla on a blood horse with a long striding gait. It seemed tough in the mouth and pulled a lot. I didn’t think much of it but I liked looking at her.

  I used to dream about her a bit. I would dream we were wrecked on a desert island, or somewhere like that. Joe did too. It’s a funny thing, but those girls you would like to talk to most you never meet and they are always too old. You only meet the ones who are not interesting.

  The Miss McAlister who came to church was called Maggie. She looked after things, I think. She’d go round the sheep and could repair a fence if she had to. She had an aged mare she kept round the station homestead, a flea-bitten grey with a Roman nose and a hollow back. I think she had been a good hack once and Miss McAlister wanted a foal out of her. She wanted to get a heavy delivery-type for cart work and had put the mare to a number of stallions in the district but she had always missed somehow.

  Peter McLeod had a Clydesdale stallion called Nero (‘He’s only got to look at a mare to put her in foal’) standing that season at his farm.

  One day Miss McAlister was driving past the pub and she saw Peter giving a fill of tobacco to old Daddy Patterson who used to bot tobacco from anyone he could buttonhole while they were passing.

  She called out to Peter: ‘Mr McLeod! Excuse me, could you spare a minute, Mr McLeod?’

  Peter hated squatters, but he didn’t mind squatters’ daughters. He said to me once, ‘They might have the station brand on them and come out of a good paddock, but they’re all ordinary station hacks at heart.’

  He went over to her buggy, but he started raising his hat too soon and had to take it off again and hold it till he got to where he could put his hand on the wheel.

  She looked down on him and said, ‘I understand you have a draught stallion, Mr McLeod.’

  ‘I have. Yes, I have. That’s right. I have.’ Peter couldn’t have agreed more.

  ‘Will he be available to serve one of my mares? She is probably barren, but I want to make sure.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll fix her all right! Don’t worry about her! Bring her along. She’s aged, is she?’

  ‘I think she’s rising nine’, said Miss McAlister, ‘although it could be ten. Her teeth are sound enough. She’s been a wonderful hack; I want to retain her breeding.’

  Peter assured her that it would not only be retained but improved; then informed her that his fee was five guineas. They shook hands on it and Miss McAlister promised to deliver the mare in a few days.

  Peter was pretty hard up and the more mares he got the better it was for him. I used to hope he would get a lot. Nero was a great horse. He had an arched neck, a short back, a rounded, powerful rump and four well-feathered, white legs he lifted like a Zulu dancer out of Rider Haggard. He pranced on his leading rein and snorted as he tossed his head.

  ‘No mare would knock him back’, Joe reckoned.

  Dad told me it depended on the stallion. ‘Some mares don’t attract them’, he said, and then went on to tell me—‘It’s a beautiful sight to see a Clydesdale stallion serve a mare. There’s power and strength there—and pride, too. Of a kind’, he added. ‘Pride can be bad, but not a stallion’s pride. He thumps the ground as he comes in with short eager steps. He shortens his stride for the final rush and rear. Then he covers her. It’s love of its kind. Yes, that’s what it is when you come to think of it. Well, you’re not missing it. You’re seeing the beginning of life.’

  Splinter Robertson brought the mare down from Barji. Grace McAlister was with him. That was the name of the pretty Miss McAlister—‘Grace’. She had marvellous laughing eyes. She got Joe and me in.

  Grace drove and Splinter led the mare. She was going to the store while Splinter walked the mare up to Peter’s.

  Joe and I hung around the store corner where we hoped she would get us to sit in the buggy and hold the horse. Blokes would give us a penny to do this, but we would have done it for her for nothing.

  When she pulled up we offered to look after the horse and she handed me the reins. We climbed up and sat in the buggy together.

  ‘There’s no doubt about an Abbot buggy’, said Joe, feeling the leather seat. ‘Even the socket for the whip handle is made of hide.’

  ‘Hey! Feel this apron!’ I said. ‘It’s
all leather, and look, it’s lined with blue felt.’

  We pretended we were rich and Joe said to me in a voice he thought resembled that of Miss McAlister, ‘What a fine little boy you are holding my horse like as if you were a great driver. Here is a bob for you.’

  ‘A bob is a lot of money for holding a horse’, I said. ‘Don’t say a “bob”, make it thruppence; that’s as high as she’ll go.’

  When Grace came out, she climbed into the buggy and sat on the driver’s side which meant I was jammed in the middle.

  ‘Don’t feel you have to go straight away’, she said. ‘I’m going to wait under the gum-tree near the church till Mr Robertson comes back. You can stop and talk to me if you wish.’

  We said we would like to, so she drove up under the old red gum and pulled up in the shade.

  The hood was halfway up. Squatters used to drive like that sometimes. The top was lowered till it pointed upwards and became a backdrop for those sitting on the seat.

  It’s hard to talk in a buggy when you are sitting in the centre. All you can think of is how you are squeezed between two people like as if you were meat in the sandwich.

  ‘I ride a great big horse and I call her “Treasure” ’, she said by way of starting us off.

  ‘Yes’, said Joe. ‘She’s a sixteen hands bay mare. We’ve seen her.’

  This knocked her back a bit and I was wild with Joe for saying it but as Joe explained later, ‘We’re not little kids you know. She should have had more sense than talk to us like as if she was reading a picture book.’

  I tried to bring the conversation her way a bit. I said, ‘We used to watch you ride through Turalla with a good-looking bloke. You were riding side-saddle. It used to be good to see you galloping along the road crossing Baker’s Flat. You know, on your way home. He chased you once. Remember that?’

  It was a picture I couldn’t forget. The bay she rode had a long, swinging stride when she was cantering but at a gallop she flattened out and there was no rise and fall in her seat on the saddle. She wore a divided skirt that hung down the horse’s side.

  The handsome bloke must have tried to put his arm around her, but she slipped out of his grip and cleared off. As she took off she looked back at him and laughed, which was a bloody stupid thing to do because he took it she wanted him to chase her.

  Joe could see this. We were talking about it while we were setting traps in the ferns. ‘You can see she knows nothing about blokes’, Joe said. ‘If she goes laughing back at blokes like that, she’s going to find herself in trouble, I’m tellin’ you!’

  ‘He’s better mounted than she is’, I said. ‘He’s riding one of the Barji stallions. She hasn’t got a chance. He’ll ride her down within a mile.’

  ‘He’s a bit like a stallion himself, said Joe. ‘Did you see the look on him when he passed us; he was carrying his head like Nero.’

  ‘Look! Quick! He’s caught her now’, I exclaimed. ‘Let’s go up here a bit. Look at him.’

  I clambered on to a rise amongst the ferns where I could look down the road to where it entered a clump of wattle growing amongst high ferns. He had ridden up beside her and lifted her from the saddle while reining in the stallion. He swung to the ground carrying her with him. He looped the reins of both horses over his arm and moved in among the ferns and the trees with his other arm around her.

  ‘What do you know about that’, I exclaimed.

  ‘Well, if he wants to kiss her, that’s the best place he could go’, said Joe. ‘No one will see them in there.’

  They stayed hidden for a while, then came out and rode away.

  When I mentioned that story to her as we sat in the buggy, Joe reckoned it really rocked her. She sat very still for a moment.

  ‘It was shearing time’, she said, as if that explained it.

  ‘He could ride, that bloke’, said Joe.

  ‘Yes. He was a wonderful man’, she said. She became quiet, then said, ‘He was a gentleman.’

  Joe was just going to say something bad about gentlemen, but he swallowed, coughed, then spat over the wheel of the buggy to clear his throat.

  ‘Don’t you like gentlemen?’ she asked Joe. She was a wake-up to Joe all right.

  I wanted to call the dog off Joe. He used to say things, then be sorry afterwards.

  ‘We don’t like gentlemen’, I said, ‘but we liked the bloke you were with.’

  ‘I see what you mean’, she said.

  I felt I was making a mess of it. ‘He’d be a good mate I think, a nice bloke to talk to.’

  ‘I think so too’, she said.

  Splinter came up then and Joe and I got out of the buggy. She gave us thruppence each which was the most money we’ve ever got from anyone; though Mum told me that a bloke gave me a bob once when I first got crippled, but I can’t remember it. Joe doesn’t believe it but I reckon it could’ve happened.

  As soon as Peter McLeod saw the flea-bitten mare he called her ‘Miss McAlister’. When I went over there one day he was looking at her as if she were a pile of rubbish dumped at his gate.

  ‘I tell you’, he said, ‘and I’m not talkin’, there’s not one good thing I can say about that horse. She lashed out at Bluey a minute ago, so she’s alive.’

  ‘He must have heeled her’, I said.

  ‘If he didn’t, she’s the only living thing in Turalla he hasn’t’, said Peter. ‘Now, take this halter and hold “Miss McAlister” beside the post and rail fence till I get Nero.’

  It was a job I liked doing. It was exciting and strange and frightening and left me breathing quickly. I had to hold ‘Miss McAlister’ against the post and rail fence so that Nero could nibble at her neck and, if she liked him doing this, she was horsing and I could lead her round to Nero’s side of the fence to be served.

  Nero knew it was going to be a good morning for him. He came stamping out of the stable behind Peter, his ears pricked forward, his neck arching away from his great shoulders like a balancing weight for his haunches.

  He neighed as he got the smell of ‘Miss McAlister’, lowering his haunches then rearing. Peter led him to the fence where ‘Miss McAlister’ was waiting.

  He came up to her, dancing and whinnying, and began biting her neck. She squealed and kicked backwards, pig-rooting to give height to her kicks.

  ‘She’s a nasty bitch, that mare’, said Peter.

  She lashed backwards again, squealing.

  ‘She’s right’, said Peter. ‘Bring her round and we’ll try her.’

  I led her round to an open space away from the fence and stood her there, holding her head. Peter led Nero round in a circle, then brought him up behind ‘Miss McAlister’. Nero showed no excitement. Peter jerked at the lead and yelled at him, but Nero turned away from her. Peter brought him up again. He bit her contemptuously on the rump, then drew back quickly and swivelled, turning his back on her.

  Peter was losing his temper. He swore at Nero and brought him round a third time, but the same thing happened again. He cursed the stallion while leading him back into the stable.

  In a minute he came out and took the halter from my hand and led ‘Miss McAlister’ through a gate where he let her go in a paddock.

  ‘We’ll try her again tomorrow’, he said, then added, ‘You know, that’s the first time in my bloody life I’ve seen that happen.’

  ‘Father said he’s seen a stallion knock back a mare’, I said.

  ‘It’s not natural’, said Peter.

  I was talking to Peter one morning when I was driving with him in the wagon taking milk to the factory.

  ‘“Miss McAlister” has come on again’, he said. ‘Come round after school and hold her, will you. I’ll put her to Nero again.’

  ‘I’ll come’, I said. ‘I’ll bring Joe with me. Joe’s good at helping.’

  ‘There’d be some cackling amongst the hens if they knew I was getting kids to help me with Nero’, he said looking up at the sky and scratching his extended neck. ‘It’s all right you coming—
your old man’s got sense—but this Joe kid, what’s his old man like?’

  ‘He works for Mrs Carruthers’, I said. ‘He’s a hell of a nice bloke, Joe’s old man.’

  ‘Righto!’ he said. ‘Come along at four.’

  We turned up at four and I was surprised to see that Peter had tied another mare to the post and rail fence. Some farmer had left her to be served by Nero. She was a strong-looking cart-horse, fat, with a glossy coat and powerful shoulders. She was a chestnut and looked good against the old fence. She rubbed the side of her nose up and down against her extended foreleg.

  ‘Now, there’s a horse for you’, said Joe. ‘Take a look at her. She’d be worth a bit I’ll bet.’

  ‘I wonder what has happened to “Miss McAlister” ’, I said, looking around the sheds. ‘Peter’s going to serve her today.’

  Peter came up from the trough leading ‘Miss McAlister’. He yelled out as he approached: ‘Don’t waste any time now. Here, you hold “Miss McAlister”, Alan’, and he held the halter towards me as he came up.

  ‘Righto! Joe! Untie the chestnut mare and fetch her over beside “Miss McAlister”. They are both horsing. I tried them both out just before you came.’ He gestured with his hands. ‘Here! Hold them side by side. Don’t hold her there, Joe. Bring your hand up. Hold the halter there’, and he placed Joe’s hand where the lead rope went through a leather-bound loop.

  ‘Don’t let them swing round when I bring Nero up behind. Now you’re right. Stand like that.’

  We stood at the heads of the two horses. I pulled ‘Miss McAlister’ forward a little to bring her head level with that of the chestnut mare.

  Peter had gone into the stable where I could hear him shouting out to Nero: ‘Stand over! Whoa back there!’

  He came out leading the stallion and I’m telling you it was a great sight. Nero was full of oats and for a moment it looked as if he was going to serve Peter. He threw his head up and almost lifted Peter off his feet. He neighed loudly and shortened his steps until he was dancing on his toes.