by Rodney Hall
– How old are you Sebastian?
– Eighty-two.
– Strange number don’t you think? In a sense a warning to one.
They were proud of their style, their subjunctives, their rigorously adjectival thats, their whoms and third person impersonals.
– Oh no it’s a benevolent number Felicia.
– Well most certainly it’s not like seventy-three.
– Were you to ask my opinion I’d call seventy-three positively forbidding.
– You see! you do understand, you’re not wholly insensitive to the finer things, my dear. Forbidding is seventy-three to a T. I feel it.
– I shall have to laugh perhaps.
– What a child you are Sebastian. When I was your age I’d have been perfectly serious about such a question.
– Ignorance is armour of a kind, I dare say.
– Just because I’m seventy-three doesn’t mean I’ve never been eighty-two. Where’s the logic in that, I should like to be told.
For the sake of style she would sometimes pursue the issue at irritating length. If challenged to defend the odd proposition, she instantly did so at such a pitch of fervour there was no stopping her, you simply had to ride out her glittering torrent of words. And all the time she’d nod her head agreeing with herself, the bundle of hair loyally bouncing, her hands describing solid weights in the air, her tongue flicking out to keep her lips shiny as she liked them, her bosom heaving and her lungs gasping for a break. Enough to daunt a braver man. So Mr Sebastian Brinsmead, author of that stern letter to the Australian Aesthetic and Historical Resources Commission, retired to his place against the wall to contemplate the gentle feelings he associated with the woman Vivien, whose surname, he was now aware, remained unknown.
Having seen the new arrival safely escorted to her house by that halfwit Tony McTaggart, Felicia Brinsmead settled behind the counter. And there she stayed for a week. Vivien called in every so often for milk, bread, meat, this and that, a good morning and a chat, and accepted the choicest apples without suspecting how lovingly they’d been set aside, but occasionally being unpleasantly surprised to find treats in her basket when she got home, unwanted tokens of favour which she promptly took back. But at the end of the week Miss Brinsmead had calmed down. The likelihood that if she wasn’t careful she’d be made to suffer once more persuaded her to pull her horns in. The ache of being rebuffed was something she could do without at any age. And what for? In return for generosity? Was she to be slighted by a young chit of no more than thirty or forty when she herself had nothing to gain by her kindnesses? Decidedly not.
– Decidedly not, Felicia Brinsmead announced one morning as the door opened.
The usual subtle change happened. Because a customer had come in, the contents of the shop displayed themselves, rustling and primping. The sagging timbers mocked his arrival.
– Miserable, miserable, the shop muttered.
The double doors on their springs clashed-to behind him, batting at the invasion of flies attempting to follow him in. He didn’t look round at the doors, so you knew he wasn’t surprised, you could tell he was used to the racket, hadn’t noticed the play of light on those gilded glass scrolls PROVISIONS PATENT MEDICINES (on one door), HABERDASHERY BOOTS & SHOES (on the other). He was a young man in jeans and a blue singlet, his bare arms warming the whole shop, his laceless boots flopping open like a couple of faithful dogs at ankle. No sooner was this customer inside than he began speaking to the appearance of Felicia Brinsmead floating behind the counter, brown air veiling her with secrets. She grew more substantial in company because of this talent she had for drawing off people’s ideas and pumping herself up with them. One hand flat on the day’s date, she waited to be spoken to. The man cleared his throat with the first word.
– Half a dozen sticks of gelignite please Miss Brinsmead, he said as he advanced keeping his eyes down but his voice making him sound quite the man of the world. Plus a fuse, he added when no reaction came. About twenty feet of that please. And some detonators too.
The shop trapped him in an interrogation of silence. He inspected his broken fingernails.
– Or dynamite would do instead, he suggested helpfully. There’s a job to be done. He now looked directly at her, his eyes defiant and dark with innocence.
The woman moved. So large and soft she was, she filled him with wonder. When she coughed she coughed in a high girlish voice that surprised people. But now she was not put out enough to cough. She was amused. Her lips moved in sympathy with his, shaping the young man’s words before he could get them out, helping him with the difficult job of making such a conspicuous request, her moony face already animated, she could hardly wait to speak her own words.
– When is it needed? she asked.
You couldn’t help noticing her eyes snap alert and blue so that he was afraid she knew his secret, even though this was impossible. She nodded encouragingly. The thump of grey hair knocked at her back. So she faced the customer with her question about when he needed his gelignite. Attentive, she anticipated his reply, her lips ready with the syllables while he admitted them. But he was used to her and her ways. He had shopped here all his life. He knew her face, the fifteen expressions none of which could be trusted, also her famous hair. Legend had it that her hair had never been cut since the day she was born. Perhaps because mothers will do anything to keep their children as they were when manageable and therefore lovable. Or might there have been some superstition in the family? Isn’t it common knowledge that after death the one thing the virtuous take with them to the next world is their hair? Wasn’t this why, seventy years ago, a wild lad named Kel McAloon dug up his dead cousin a fortnight from the burial to snip off a pinch of bristle from the chin, and later turned savage and a government agent as a result? Who could explain how Felicia Brinsmead’s hair had, at the bottom of its sack, a protruding wisp of gold, one curl of child’s hair which some miracle kept young and delicate?
Using the simple expedient of asking her for an article on the shelf behind her, I might have shown you this hair long enough for you never to forget.
– Right away I need it, the customer eventually answered in his assertive young voice. I needed it yesterday.
At this the military uniform in the corner shook with cultured laughter and wagged its white beard: yesterday, how could you need explosives yesterday! It was the sort of nonsense he delighted in, frail whiskers catching on the buttons of his tunic, and whiskers wandering free behind his ears. The customer greeted him with the politeness left over from childhood.
– I’ll see for you, Miss Brinsmead promised. She made it her business to drift about, bouncing off the furniture, parting the veils of bacon smells, as if the stock of lethal weapons might be in among chocolate creams or washing soaps. But who knows what was going on beneath her shopkeeper’s decorum? Perhaps she wasn’t really paying attention to the present, perhaps she was reliving the time she had run through London, her long skirts heavy with rain, dodging hansom cabs and dogs, looking for somewhere to shelter, the steam rising from her woollen jacket mildly obnoxious and altogether too personal. Miss Brinsmead confronted the customer with kindly despair.
– No luck, Billy. I shall check outside if you wish. Offering this much hope, and why not, she backed through a curtainway to the house behind the shop.
The young man was left with the helplessness of those not reconciled to waiting. Unemployed at the counter, he glanced about as if observant. Jesus, he thought, this shop’s a bloody junk heap. Those old dresses hanging as thick with dust as a lot of thin women in a fog.
– Nice drop of rain, he said to Mr Brinsmead who smiled.
Take those gumboots up there, must be perished by now. You don’t see anything like this when you shop in Yalgoona. Mind you Yalgoona stocks one hundred percent garbage, whereas here at Whitey’s you can still get things that’ll last, even if they are worn out when you buy them.
– Bit of a cold snap this morning though Mr B
rinsmead. It shut the damn frogs up, he went on conversationally. Just getting a go on, they were, when bang, cold snap hits them. Bit of humour in the bush, he explained as he turned away from the smiling lunatic.
Considered however you like, the Brinsmeads, brother and sister, were mysterious in their ways. For one thing, they had left Whitey’s Fall twenty-three times and always returned to be the people’s link with what was happening out there, telling the sort of thing the radio or television kept back. They understood that a person would want to know the condition of the soul in Los Angeles, how much the land was loved in Portugal, who first spoke the word Zaire, and if there were snowcapped mountains on the equator did the people grow shorter and fatter the higher up the slopes they lived? They brought back tidings of the different rhythms of the Pacific and the Atlantic, the progress of butterfly migrations.
Billy, for a moment of wonder, knew how it was to be Sebastian Brinsmead, brother of the bat with her mind-reading. What else would you do but stand with your back to the wall tuning in to another world and occasionally leaking a bit of an overflow of laughter? You couldn’t help sympathizing.
Miss Brinsmead returned and took up her station at the counter where it was still warm, placing her hand over the indiscretion of today. She made her announcement.
– We have none in stock so it is to be supposed we can’t do a thing about it until another order comes in, Billy. She was a heap of cauliflowers.
The customer slapped the counter with annoyance. The sardine-can choristers sang joyfully. He bought an ounce of tobacco and some cigarette papers which his father had challenged him not to forget, and then left without another word. The worst fears of the frozen chickens were confirmed. The veteran nodded his halo knowingly. The promises on the double-doors shuddered. The cat lay among the eucalyptus drops, licking aromatic sugar from its paws, feeling through its skin those mouse corpses further along the shelf, breathing dry papery air, reducing the recent intruder to a mere slit in its eye.
– Time for lunch Sebastian. Time to close the shop. Sebastian would you please close the shop? Miss Brinsmead was ordering her brother about as usual.
– So it’s time for luncheon? Very well, but you know what this means? He tottered away from his supporting wall and clutched the door.
– I know what everything means, that’s a fact you’ve never understood about me. Saying this, she removed her hand from today’s date, leaving it at large, challenging the world to cope as best it may, inviting a generation’s barbarities to slip out in search of new contexts.
– Latch is loose. Bolt getting too stiff. Must oil it, the dummy commented. Himself hinged and folded double now, becoming desperate as thin evils of greed plastered themselves against the glass, seeking the crack he struggled to close.
– You’re ageing with use, there lies the ruin.
– What would you. Suppose. Felicia. That young fellow. Might want. Gelignite for? He grunted as the bolt gave under his huge strength and rasped home. He pulled down the rattling blinds with the air of a man who has done the right thing.
– How should I know about science, with him in the house? she whispered. But what a very agreeable girl we’re to have among us, she said loudly. Fancy her buying that place with not much of it fit to live in. So it’s lunchtime at last. Let’s go through, I’m quite peckish.
– After you my dear.
– Thank you my dear.
He looked down at her filthy lump of hair as she walked in front of him, acknowledging that she had at least this to show for her life’s work.
– Shall I call him to the kitchen, Felicia?
– Not yet. I’ll make the tea, then he will have no excuse.
Mr Brinsmead caught his sister shooting him one of those side-long glances.
– Ahh, it’s a relief to sit. My goodness I’ve a fine hunger in me.
– I cannot imagine why you stand all day against the wall like some beastly martyr. At your age. You put the customers off.
– I never sit in there, he insisted.
– That’s just what I said.
Felicia watched him fondly. What a decorative old buffer he’d made of himself. And the conversation pleased her. She attended to kitchen matters, waiting for him to say something else, knowing what it would be before he could speak the words.
– Did you see the startled way that young fellow reacted when I laughed Felicia? His surprise took me aback considering he has known me all his life. And so on.
– Who’s this?
– Our customer, young whatshisname. How could you forget already. It’s those things you eat, brown rice and wild plants, they affect your memory.
– I heard you laughing and I thought, he doesn’t know what he’s doing laughing at someone else. I feel bound as a sister to tell you frankly Sebastian you have become a very strange man, and there’s no end in it.
Weary of this ancient and self-perpetuating folly, he reverted to the other topic of the morning.
– One wonders what that young woman might think of Annie’s place.
– You mean will she settle?
– Oh she won’t stay, Sebastian decided promptly, sadly.
– I believe you’re wrong. Well dear, I’m ready. Time for Fido, the tea is waiting, and anyway he’ll take ten minutes to cross the corridor. And this is the age of jet propulsion they say. I shall laugh soon myself.
– Fido, Fido! you are required for lunch, called the old man raising his massive head and setting frail whiskers aflutter. Please come now old chap. Can you hear me? He never answers. It’s those liberal ideas about free upbringing that make him so rude.
– I can remember, I can remember … the same thing being said to me before. I remember Julius, you see Sebastian, Julius Caesar, the Italian one you know, leaping out of bed one morning. When I put my hand across to his side, to where he had been sleeping, it was not only warm but damp. What on earth would you make of that?
– What did you make of it is more to the point.
– I don’t recall. It was a long time ago. And perhaps it didn’t strike me as irregular.
– Was it a hot night?
– Oh the weather! she dismissed the weather as too trivial for the grandeur of her history.
– I’m trying to be helpful, being well aware how aggravating it is not to know the reasons for something.
– Reasons reasons. You’re still victim to the French and their timid obsession with proof. Why else do you think laboratories are boiling harmless animals to observe whether it kills them?
– I don’t see what that has to do with the French I really don’t. Nor with Julius Caesar for that matter Felicia. He touched her hand affectionately; really she was one of the wonders.
– We never had anything peculiar happen did we, you and I? Not in our bed. Nothing. For years. Do stop that awful neighing. You’re so sudden. It stands my hair on end.
– My hair has stood on end any number of times, he said artlessly.
– Why doesn’t Fido answer. He knows it distresses me.
– Fido! Please forget your modern disposition old chap. The tea is in the cup, I warn you. I do believe he’s coming at last. Such condescension.
– It’s doubtful that the night could have been particularly hot because we were up at Gessoriacum on the edge of the empire. There you are Fido, at long last. The tea’s in the cup. One must learn manners if one is to be liked by this hateful world. No Sebastian, you can’t conceive how I suffer because I’m not free of what everybody else has been. Stop slurping Fido, I can’t bear the noise.
– A story, her brother replied inconsequentially, is the autobiography of an imagination. He turned kindly to Fido. I want you to remember that, as we begin your education.
Two
Whitey’s Fall perches halfway up a mountainside, the mountain the people created. year by year they accumulated the knowledge, the experience. They have the words so they know how to live with it. By their toughness they survived to h
eap up its bluffs, by scepticism they etched its creekbeds. They’ve lived and spoken every part of this mountain, they’ve dreamed it and cursed it, looked to it for salvation and penance. Its outcrops of granite are the very ones the people named, quarried and picnicked on before you could say there really was a mountain in this place at all. And the forest covering tells of its secrecy.
So the mountain came to be there and indifferent to the people, those clinging whittlers in mud burrows. The mountain stood up, hunched and massive, shouldering into the rain, drenched and indistinct; just as it sprawled in the sun drifting with spirits of steam and giving out birdsong from grateful pores; so it crackled with frost and early morning, yellow robins with twiggy legs hopping among the crystals, spiderwebs drooping under the weight of clear beads; so it hissed softly when dust storms swirled round it, deceived into becoming a grainy sepia photograph of itself. All the while, whatever the season, the mountain was busy. The life of the mountain had to go on. Water wavered in trickles of hair down to the gullies, runnels joined together with a sparkling clash. Soil broke apart to re-form itself as grass, grasstrees, fern and treefern, vines and huge eucalypts for the vines to hang from. Rock strata at the mountain’s heart, with inconceivable slowness, tilted themselves, turning in millennial sleep, the seams of quartz fracturing brittle as glass, clay compacting to stone, fissures appearing and closing, soil falling away to reveal cliffs and cliffs crashing one by one down the mountainside in a flurry of gold dust. And the mountain created a wind appropriate to its shape, so the wind set and that’s how it remained.
In those times the Aborigines of the region, the Koories, had no knowledge of any such mountain. Neither did they know nor care about gold. And but for gold, who would have stayed here at all? The people were families of diggers. Never mind that later they turned their hand to dairy farming and making cheese.
