Tamarisk Row

by Gerald Murnane

  Clement visits Tamarisk Row on a Sunday

  Until the early hours of a Sunday afternoon after he has been to holy communion, Clement moves gingerly among the roads and farms in his backyard, aware all the time of the precious whiteness of the egg-shaped soul that floats inside him in the space between his stomach and his heart. He carries in the pocket of his shirt a few cards from his collection of holy pictures. When no one is watching, he kisses devoutly the picture on the front of a card, holds it obliquely in the sunlight to see the dull sheen of the circles of golden dust around the heads of the holy people, then turns the card over and whispers aloud the pious ejaculation – eucharistic heart of Jesus have mercy on us, that is printed on the back. He puts the card back in his pocket, pressing it firmly against his heart, and stands waiting while the three hundred days’ indulgence that the little prayer has earned him drifts downwards in a million-faceted cloud of jewelled dust and embeds itself in the yielding surface of his soul in the shape of the rim of a petal or the vein of a leaf that is still only half-formed at the outer edge of the arabesque that may take years more to complete. Through the unworthy streets of his city a boy carries little Jesus dressed in the ballooning silk sleeves and begemmed jacket of the Divine Infant of Prague. Clement knows that the great saints of olden times would lock themselves away from all sights of lawns and birds and coloured glass and rich cloths and pray alone in their rooms with such fervour that long before they died they could see within themselves far glittering landscapes whose inviting laneways led through groves of molten green towards iridescent courtyards where a person would never again need to search for those shapes and colours that he had once seen from each opposite end of the city where he was born but could never discover although he walked for years up and down its long footpaths. The most that a boy like Clement Killeaton can hope for, since he wakes each morning in a house whose doors fit so badly that the north wind brings in grains of dust that are all he ever sees of the towns he would have to pass through on a journey in search of cities where God once appeared to His holy people, and whose plaster walls are so worn that they let through strands of yellow hair that are all he ever sees of a girl he would like to take with him when he sets out for God’s land, is that he might go on living quietly in a city whose yellowish soil and greyish grass-seeds cling to his skin and clothes while he repeats the prayers that are laden with indulgences from the Church’s inexhaustible treasury of grace and goes to communion every Sunday to add a few more opalescent granules to the patterns forming slowly in his soul. But out among the tall ragged weeds of his backyard he keeps stumbling on the familiar roads that he has been forming for years with his own hands to lead back the owners of racehorses to the shaded houses where their wives wait during long hot afternoons, stripping off one piece after another of their clothes as the heat grows worse, and to make long and trying the journey of one man, the owner of a horse named Tamarisk Row, back to the property where his wife has waited so often during the years of their marriage but has still not yet heard late one evening that their horse has won the prize that they know he deserves. A faint grey film of grime settles all over Clement’s soul. The hundreds of minute crevices between the chips and slivers of the semi-precious stones whose patterns he can still only guess at are slowly choked with a dark repulsive grease. On the wide expanses of tender white stuff that may one day be encrusted with glancing shards of holy communions and winking sequins of Masses and luminous crumbs of indulgenced prayers in a pattern more complex than any distant sight of silk-jacketed riders in some impossible race of a thousand tightly bunched horses that will show the long slow story of a boy’s struggle to become a good Catholic and save his soul in the end, specks and blotches of sickly brown and dark-grey well up and spread outwards like weeping sores. Clement moves slowly through the tall marshmallow weeds, tracing the involved system of roads that a racehorse owner must follow homewards after one more unlucky race to where his wife’s naked body is all he has to console him. The boy stands waiting while the owner leads the horse from the float to the loosebox and while he measures carefully the horse’s evening feed. A scum-like coating obliterates the last details of the pattern that might have gone on forming all day in the boy’s soul if only he had not remembered that man and his wife who never gave up hoping that one hot Sunday they could sit together reminding each other of how their own colours were fixed at last ahead of twenty other combinations in a pattern that could never be altered.

  The field lines up for the Gold Cup race

  There is a city isolated by plains where on one day of every summer every man, woman and child and every priest and brother and nun finds a vantage point on a long slope of trampled grass beside the straight of a racecourse where the Gold Cup race will be run. Every person who watches the long line of horses walking out from the saddling paddock or cantering past on their way to the starting barrier has somewhere about him at least one betting ticket. Some people look up only briefly at the pastel-coloured sky on the morning of the great day and feel only a quick spasm of excitement to think that the afternoon will be hot and cloudless. These people wait until they arrive at the course before they each choose a horse and bet a small sum that they can afford to lose. Others keep glancing up at the sky all morning and feel a keen pleasure at the thought of the long fierce afternoon to come. These people have been trying to decide for weeks which horse they will finally call their own for the few minutes of the big race and how much money they dare to risk in the hope of winning what they have wanted for so long. Others, the owners and trainers of the horses entered in the Gold Cup, have felt on many mornings, while most of the people in the city were thinking of other things than racing, alternate waves of elation and fear as they moved quietly around their stables watering or grooming their horses or loading them into trucks or floats. They remember the successes or failures of their lives as glimpses of fields of horses rushing past slender winning posts in small towns of which the racecourses are all that they have ever seen. The horses that these people back in the Gold Cup are their own, the same ones that they have hauled home across miles of strange country and led back to their sheds late at night after races in which they failed by one thrust of their legs to earn their connections hundreds of pounds in stakes and bets. The bets that these people risk on their horses in the Gold Cup are far larger than those of the people who come to watch – not because the owners and trainers are wealthier than other people but because many of them depend on racing for their livelihood and must bet all the money they can spare whenever one of their horses has a chance of winning. Long before noon the people of the city begin to arrive at their racecourse. Lesser races are run. The sun grows still hotter. Seen from the crowded hill beside the straight the city is only a few towers and rooftops among confusing rows of trees. In the hottest hour of the afternoon the first starter in the Gold Cup appears on the track and the thousands of people standing with their backs to the city look down at their racebooks to check the colours and numbers of the field. As the voice of the course broadcaster announces each name the connections and supporters of that horse look up from the page to see the silk jacket of the rider, conspicuously alone against the waste of grass that fills the inside of the course. The sound of each name and the stately passage of each precisely coloured jacket past the stand remind the crowd that this day they have waited so long to enjoy is no ordinary holiday but a solemn occasion because despite all the ambitious claims of the resonant names and arresting colours only one horse will be famous for years afterwards while the followers of those that come within a few yards of winning will talk among themselves during those years of some trifling accident – a horse shifting ground for a few yards approaching the turn or a horse changing stride in the straight or a rider losing his balance near the post – that condemned them to remember only a victory that was almost theirs. Number one Monastery Garden, purple shade, solitudes of green, white sunlight, for the garden that Clement Killeaton suspects is just b
eyond the tall brick wall of his schoolyard – the garden where priests pray and meditate beneath the leaves on even the hottest afternoons. Number two Infant of Prague, alluring satin and embraceable cloth-of-gold, for the picture of the child Jesus that Clement tries to fix in his mind after holy communion. Number three Mysteries of the Rosary, incandescent depths of blue enclosing elusive jewelled points or stars, for the beads that Clement rolls delicately between his fingertips while he meditates on the joys and sorrows and glories of Our Lady. Number four Silver Rowan, a film of translucent rainy colour across the pure green of a country much older than Australia, for the horse that Augustine Killeaton still dreams of owning. Number five Lost Streamlet, a stripe of golden brown persisting through the grey-green of remote thickets, for the creek that might lead Clement to the secrets of Bassett if only he could follow it through a confusing maze of side-streets where he sees only glimpses of it. Number six Hare in the Hills, the colour of lawns spotted with flowers in valleys where the birds and animals are almost tame, for the land of Little Jacky Hare – the land that no Australian boy has ever entered. Number seven Passage of North Winds, an orange-red colour that is best looked at from a certain angle and is continually threatened by a turbulent yellow whose true extent may be far greater than the colour it opposes, for the miles of plains to the north of Bassett which Augustine Killeaton once crossed and which Clement believes stretch unbroken to the heart of Australia. Number eight Transylvanian, grey or the colour of pale skin with seams or veins the colour of a precious stone from a far country, for the endless journey of the gypsies from Egypt through the gloomy valleys of Europe to the grassy back-roads of northern Victoria and still further to places only they could discover because Australians all thought their country had been thoroughly explored. Number nine Captured Riflebird, a colour that wavers between green and purple enclosed with gold or bronze margins, for all the rare and gorgeous birds of Australia that Clement Killeaton only knows from books and may never observe except in some enormous aviary copied from the Australian landscape. Number ten Hills of Idaho, gold or buff the colour of endless distances edged with the faintest stripe or suggestion of mauve or pale-blue, for the most longed-for vista of America – the shimmering foothills that all hillbilly singers and film stars are trying to reach. Number eleven Veils of Foliage, a striking pattern of black and silver and gold overlaid with deep green, for the glimpses of sumptuous lounge-rooms behind flashing windows overhung with shrubbery that are all Clement has seen of the homes of the wealthy people of Melbourne who work as professional punters or illustrators of magazines or projectionists in picture theatres. Number twelve Springtime all turquoise or peacock-blue or amethyst, for the sky over the mountains on the morning of the day when a man nears the end of his long journey back to the woman he has loved since he first peeped into her backyard as a schoolboy, and wonders whether she will have pity on him after all the miles he has travelled. Number thirteen Den of Foxes, a preponderance of black or dark-brown with only a hint of a smouldering colour like the flash of some rare treasure or the eye of a wild dingo in an inaccessible cave, for all the secrets that Therese Riordan and the girls of Bassett will never reveal. Number fourteen Proud Stallion, flamboyant scarlet perversely opposed by a luxurious violet colour, for the furtive excitement that Clement enjoyed when he persuaded Kelvin Barrett to behave like a savage stallion and the mystery of what the Barrett family do in their house on hot afternoons. Number fifteen Tamarisk Row, green of a shade that has never been seen in Australia, orange of shadeless plains and pink of naked skin, for the hope of discovering something rare and enduring that sustains a man and his wife at the centre of what seem to be no more than stubborn plains where they spend long uneventful years waiting for the afternoon when they and the whole of a watching city see in the last few strides of a race what it was all for.

  Clement hears that the Barretts go naked

  Clement listens quietly from another room while his mother tells his father a story she heard from her friend Mrs Postlethwaite of how Mrs P went over to Mrs Barrett’s for something or other and knocked on the front door because she doesn’t really know Mrs Barrett well enough to go around the back and sing out and how Mrs P knocked a good few times and at last she heard someone coming down the passage and this woman’s voice called out who is it and before Mrs P could get the words out of her mouth the door opened and there was Mrs Barrett poking her head and shoulders around but Blind Freddy could have seen she didn’t have a stitch on and when she saw it was only Mrs Postlethwaite she opened the door wide and stood there as bold as brass in the nuddy and said she’d just been sitting in the bath with the kids to cool off because it was so hot and it never seemed to worry her whether someone might have been going past in the street just then. Poor Mrs P got such a shock she hopped inside so the woman could close the door and said what she had to say and got for her life but before she went this big lump of a Barrett boy as old as Clement at least strolled out of the bathroom as naked as an Indian to see who was there. Clement watches for Kelvin Barrett in the streets in the late afternoon. When he catches up with Barrett at last, Clement says – I wonder what it would be like if we played some of those stallion games again. Barrett says – I’m sick of all that stuff. He tells Clement that he has found out some much better games. A new boy at Shepherd’s Reef school has been teaching him. The new boy has been shifting around all over the place and going to all sorts of schools. Clement says – I wonder if he ever knew the Silverstone boy. Barrett says – yes he’s always talking about that boy. Clement asks – does your sister play the games and other girls too? Kelvin says – yes if they want to. Clement asks – does your mother ever watch you? The boy says – of course but she never tries to stop us. Clement asks how the Barrett family keeps cool on very hot days. Kelvin says – we go out on the back lawn under the hose or sometimes we have a cold bath. Clement hesitates, then asks could he come up to Kelvin’s if his mother lets him one hot afternoon. The boy says – I suppose so. Clement does not dare ask his mother to let him visit the Barretts’ until it is too late and he realises that the hottest days of summer are over. Late in March he watches closely a morning that seems likely to bring back the weather he wants, but something too subtle for him to see happens in the air and the day he has been waiting for disappears into the end of another summer.

  Clement learns of the desperate journeys of the Arabs

  Early on the first afternoon that Clement spends in grade three, the teacher Miss Callaghan makes the children join their hands in front of them on the desks. She tells them – now you’re going to learn something about your new subject geography. She cleans a wide space on the blackboard then lifts out daintily between two fingers a stick of orange-yellow chalk from a new box. She rubs the chalk sideways across the board to make an unbroken plain then places the stick neatly back in its box, takes out a blue stick and makes a belt of sky above the horizon of sand or gravel. She tells the grade about the Arabs of Arabia or Egypt who have to spend their lives travelling across a cruel desert. She asks someone – what would you need if you lived in a desert instead of a city with trees all around? The child says – cool houses and lawns to play on. She asks other children until someone tells her – water. Miss Callaghan uses the blue chalk to make a neat round pool of water far out on the plain. With a few quick strokes of a stick of green chalk she puts three palm-trees, each with four identical drooping fronds, at regular intervals around the pool. She tells the children how the thirsty Arabs make for such places when they are hot and tired and still a long way from the end of their journey. Miss Callaghan says slowly and emphatically – oasis, and prints the word neatly beside the water. She tells the children it is an important word that they must not forget. Then they take out their geography exercise books and she shows them on which page to draw an oasis. Those children who have crayons are allowed to colour in the water, the leaves, the desert and the sky. Half-way through drawing his oasis Clement looks up across the furrowed oran
ge-brown desk-top and sees on the wall a picture of a green lawn in England many years before. Two boys in flimsy summer clothes are trying to pour water from a watering-can onto a dog. The dog struggles and barks but the girl with long fair hair cannot rescue her pet because the boys are too strong. She waits until one of the boys puts the can beside him on the grass. Before the boys can stop her she grabs the can and empties it over them, flinging the water through the wide hole at the top. While they stand shivering and howling, the girl’s mother comes out from the house through the arbours of climbing roses. She orders them inside and makes them take off all their clothes to hang in front of the stove. The girl stands watching and smiling at their shrunken little cocks. Her mother tells her not to make fun of them, but does not send her away. When their clothes are dry the boys set off for home. Outside the house they whisper to the girl that they’ll get even with her one day. Miss Callaghan says – who’s that chattering and nattering down the back I’d like to know? Boys and girls each put a finger on their lips and shake the fingers of the other hand at a girl named Colleen Kirk. Miss Callaghan says – so you’re the gossip Miss Kirk? The girl stands up and says – please Miss Callaghan it wasn’t me at all. The children around her wag their fingers furiously and say in a chorus of shocked voices – ooer ooer. The girl says – Miss Callaghan they’re picking on me. The teacher says – sit down for the moment but I’m keeping my eye on you. Two boys still wait their chance to tip water all over a girl when her mother is not watching from between the high walls of roses. They pretend that they are only interested in sprinkling the fluffy dog and never look past the rainbow that the sunlight makes in their drops of water towards a room where almost every week on some afternoon when the children have packed away their books ready for home their teacher says – we’ll have a quick test in geography before we get out the door – first question what’s the name of the place that the Arabs are always trying to get to on their travels across the desert in Egypt or Arabia? and still only half the class put up their hands to answer, and where the boy Killeaton begins to suspect that even on the last day of their year with Miss Callaghan no one, not even the teacher, will know any more of the story of the Arabs than that they set out to cross hundreds of miles of country and had to turn back from wherever they were heading for towards a place where in the comfortless shade of three unlikely trees they saw a shallow pool that hardly anyone believes would ever be found in such a barren place as they stand in the hottest hour of the afternoon chanting in loud strained voices their last prayers for the day – to thee do we cry poor banished children of Eve to thee do we send up our sighs mourning and weeping in this vale of tears, and a boy sees almost invisible droplets of water drifting downwards while children around him are thinking of other things that may never happen.