Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  – A.S.… A.L. Who’s A.L.?

  – Annie Lang, old donkey. Dead now, I suppose, but as sweet a darlin lump as you’d ever come across. Though she was clever I’ll say. And all the world’s troubles on her shoulders. By cripes she was still smilin too. Never spared erself. Even to marryin Joey McTaggart. There was a public service for you. That couldn’t of been love, with him weak and skinny as somethin out a the Bible. Funny about them McTaggarts, eether they’re as big as a bull or as weak as piss.

  Uncle contemplated the faint heart, his eyes balls of lead.

  – First time I kissed Annie she near knocked me down she gave me such a whack. Next time I whacked her first, and then kissed her. She never held grudges. Winnin form, she had.

  – Why didn’t you marry her?

  – Didn’t need to, did I? his rough voice caressed the mountain lilt. If she’d have wanted it, she’d have had it. I don’t say I was much of a catch, no way. Off drivin me bullocks three parts of every week. Plus bein ugly as a toad into the bargain. Four inches shorter than her. And never able to keep a quid longer than two hours at a stretch. No wonder. Serves me right. Mind you, if I had of married her I’d be dead by now.

  Billy laughed with pleasure.

  – Why’s that Uncle?

  – She’d of made me soft. Livin with er I’d of got so comfortable and that-there, I’d just of laid down and said come and get me God.

  They squinted at that trace of a heart till the initials began peeling away. A crow flew past.

  – Bad luck, declared Uncle. He’s on his way to help pick skins clean along Jamie Collins’s fence, I dare say.

  – Or dad’s place.

  They stood nodding at ghosts.

  – Jesus but a man could hate this dump, Billy shouted to be sure Uncle would hear.

  – Your dad! That crow’ll poison himself if he don’t watch out. Oy, he said projecting his huge voice in the direction of the general store. What’s young Felissy Brindle doin leerin out at me through the window? Goodday you bag. How’s your hair? She’s had her lot. And very good luck to her I say. Good morning. How do you do? Her and your grandmother used to fight like foxes. Of course my wife was what you’d call an acquired taste, not to put too fine a point on it, that I will admit. On top of which, so was Felissy.

  Again Billy laughed. Whenever he spoke to his grandfather he felt like laughing, he felt as young as he was, it made you want to jump. That was the effect Uncle had.

  – Goodday Uncle, said Tony McTaggart approaching respectfully, modestly, but not from the shed where he worked. He came down the track at the side of the shop from the direction of Annie Lang’s old place, looking flushed and pleased with himself.

  – Where have you been? Billy demanded, meaning two questions.

  – Have you been waiting? Tony resorted to evasion.

  – What’s up young McTaggart? You and my grandson here on the slops, is that it? Allowin him to lead yous astray? Saying this, Uncle let go of Billy’s arm creating a gap to emphasize his mock disapproval.

  – I haven’t got there meself yet, Bill confessed. Though I’m working at it.

  Uncle flapped his walkingstick wings to indicate that he joined the angels in renouncing moral responsibility for sinners.

  – You’ll get there, he promised. You’ll go astray alright. Me eyes is open and me wits is buzzin, which is more than some can say.

  The trio set off up the hill toward the famous Mountain Hotel.

  – You walk a step or two behind us Mr McTaggart, the old man ordered. So’s that’ll bring yer mouth down about level with me ear, then I shan’t miss yer pearls a wisdom.

  Tony obediently fell back a pace, his arms still cradling the memory of a young woman’s luggage. But they didn’t talk. Poor old cove, he was thinking, must be ninety and you can’t last for ever, especially burning himself out to keep up his reputation. And what’s got into Bill? He won’t talk like he used to. You can’t please him. So Tony observed a forested mountain ridge sprouting from Billy’s head.

  Bill Swan had other things to think of than finer feelings. His discovery had to be kept secret. Gold all over again. And with the trouble this led to, it was enough to occupy a better head than his. To cap everything Miss bloody Brinsmead refused to sell him gelignite though he was positive she had some. So now the dangerous word was spoken. Gossip was bound to follow. Oh shit. But it had to be done. He tried diverting himself with other concerns: if Mr Ping didn’t finish fixing Dad’s tractor soon the new paddock mightn’t be done before the rain set in; you could hear Alice bellowing along the wind, so she might die this time leaving someone else in need; the whole town wearing poorer and poorer; Tony kept wanting something and you couldn’t tell what.

  – A course, Uncle volunteered as they trooped into the musty porch of the Mountain. She was a world beauty once, Felissy was, even them people up from Melbourne’d just stop and stare. She was alright, but. That is, till her pa died and Sebbie kept takin er tourin round the Empire like she was queen erself. About twelve thirteen year ago, they went and when they come home of a sudden she showed as somebody you never knew was there under the skin.

  – Jesus himself could easy hate this place, Billy growled.

  – True enough, Uncle agreed placidly as he poked a stick at the door to the public bar.

  – True, Tony echoed lamely, holding the door open for them.

  At this moment, when there was no one in the street to hear, a faint voice deep inside the general store called Fido, Fido! you’re wanted for lunch …

  Four

  Sebastian Brinsmead, I said to myself, your duty is to wait for what will be known when it happens. Have faith, I said. Life is God’s tapestry, nothing more, and nearly complete by the look of it today. Just one corner here to finish. Every detail my understanding of Him. Yet haven’t I helped with this tapestry in some way? Isn’t it mine too? And repentance in each imperfection? Precious repentance because it’s a way to Him. Have I the right to claim? The work of God being the comprehension of the world. The vastness itself a design. Even the wicked, the ugly. Is there anything else to happen, Lord? If I can only stand still enough to keep the tapestry in focus … still… to see it whole and equally. The tapestry of eternity and so forth. That was young Bill Swan in the shop a moment ago. And my poor parents thought they had the testament of Jesus for the permanence of profit!

  – He gave me a photograph once you know Felicia.

  The tapestry in all its detail is the work of… As the weft too could be a symbol… The glorious radiance of it rich with detail, colour and …

  – I heard you Sebastian. But a photograph must be of something to be a photograph. What was this a photograph of?

  – That dead president of the United States, the Kennedy boy we met once in Boston, I clearly recall the occasion, visiting a school among flowering trees. He must have been no more than twelve years old and he stuck his tongue out at you.

  – President Kennedy, Miss Felicia Brinsmead observed, was of course pure fantasy. He was a religious fantasy. He only seemed to be there running America because Americans wanted to believe they had someone like that.

  Last time she explained this in public there was a priest visiting who chuckled, charmed, worldly to his fingertips; repartee he recognized as readily as unsaved souls, though the good lady seemed not to notice how beautifully he was following her nonsense.

  – What there was instead, she cried warmly, was another person who for the sake of convenience shall remain unnamed, by no means a man of the same appearance as the supposed President Kennedy because this unnamed one had nothing to do with appearances, he was a ruthless cold-minded political tactician who had Winston Churchill and the betrayal of the Greeks on the brain; or Jenghiz Khan and all those horses.

  – See-see-ha-ya-wa-ya-haa, the priest had sniggered, discreetly appreciative, though she had not yet finished.

  – He was a man in his element with confrontations against great nations abroad and
also in deceiving great minorities … (for a moment the phrase clanged doubtfully, but she allowed it to stand) … at home.

  – But, protested the witness of God’s tapestry remaining paralysed under his halo of white hair, Kennedy was the only humane intelligent president to lead the Americans since Independence; that is why I have made a point of remembering him.

  – Nonsense! No president ever led the United States of America, she patted the side of one of her newspaper towers as if encouraging a horse, swaying ahead of a polite but incredulous hunting party, seeming now to look back at them and smile.

  – So Bill Swan was here again Felicia with a peculiar request, the dummy added in that infuriating way of relatives who change the subject to neutralize your best insights on some celestial score card.

  – You heard what he wanted? she asked.

  – Yes but not why. He’s out there in the street with a friend. Friends are a good sign.

  Indulging his fatuousness, she made no comment. True, Sebastian was the one person to whom she had consciously and systematically bared her inner life. Yes, to strengthen her own grasp on it, she’d invited him to share what mattered. But he hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was on about, being slave to his own inner truths, truths she understood all too well, with their obsessive rights and wrongs. He could hallucinate moral conundrums regardless of what was going on around him. So he couldn’t quite tell whether the answer he actually gave her was what he’d just said or what he now thought: countless generations have bequeathed this to us, the kings and queens of England have served us; we are casting off the tapestry, only a few more stitches left to be double-tied, slipped free. Without a doubt it’s the Lord’s work. The shape of life. I’m laughing perhaps. Waiting for the moment when I shall know the truth I have believed in; the piercing burning fire darting into my legs chest neck cheek stomach. Laughing gently. And I think quietly laughing. So be it.

  – Don’t ogle me! I’m not in on your comfortable joke, cried Miss Brinsmead stoutly. I won’t let you save me.

  Not only was Miss Brinsmead’s hair a feature of the landscape; not only was she still indiscreet in love, as shown by her reaction to the young woman bringing a message from the dead; but in that same household lived the author of a secret document with SECRET actually printed on the cover, a diary of entries pencilled first and then inked in later.

  Nobody has remembered my birthday. I’m twelve and I might as well be nothing. I used to promise this is when they would let me free. If I escape, it won’t count.

  Fido’s room at the back of the shop had only one window; high up on the west wall, really more of a fanlight, perpetually filled with the mountain minus all foreground. He began by seeing the mountain as an outline, an ink drawing that invited one of several colour tints (topaz as the mist lifted, jade in the winter morning sun, amethyst in autumn rain) waiting for a foreground, waiting for somebody to come, something to happen. Only the mountain knew what he did all day, saw him read the piles of newspapers and hide the sticks of gelignite he stole from the shop before his mother was up. What the mountain could not be expected to know was Fido’s genius. The mountain had no idea it was nodding in through that narrow rectangle at a prodigy who understood all he read and observed: for example, when Fido saw it as a coloured drawing in a frame he could have made another, identical, drawing if he had wanted to. He could even have invented a neat little town to tuck in front, architect-impressions, verandahs, windows, and the roadway dotted with horses pulling buggies, white and black horses, legs kicked forward in the style of champion trotters, plus a sky dabbed on in washes. Or else no buildings, but the smooth flanks of the mountain parched brown above a belt of skeletal trees rising among dry rather pernickety shapes suggesting dust more than cloud.

  Fido folded away the news of 1933, British troops dealing with religious riots in Alawar; he completely suppressed the fighting between Hindus and Moslems occasioned by a theft of camels, to write in his diary Nobody has remembered my birthday. One day of course he would win the VC and then he would be able to withstand anything.

  As the mountain watched him, so he watched the mountain grow lush with detail, every treetop equal in its particulars, saw it become a structure heaped up solely to support trees, a display stand for the world’s biggest exhibition of leaves, also a freak of light picking out one treefern with unnatural clarity and loving prominence, the whole picture no longer a record of alienation but a celebration of the exotic. He wrote in his diary I’m twelve and I might as well be nothing.

  He sat on the chest where the gelignite was hidden and calculated how long it would be before he had sufficient. And wrote in his diary I used to promise this is when they would set me free.

  – Fido dear there’s no call to bolt your food. (He’s rather lovely, though hateful.)

  – Better? (When are you going to die?)

  – This modernist education, Felicia, is beyond me. Not to mention the pernicious influence of television. (At times he looks so exactly… it’s positively painful.)

  – But Uncle Sebastian I don’t think I’ve had any education at all. (Uncle, Uncle.)

  – Let us at least converse about something more refined than definitions. We were not born to this dismal shop.

  – Very well Felicia, you begin.

  Both her brother and her son could see how she thought her face sweetly expectant as she placed her spoon and fork on the plate the better to concentrate.

  – Public hangings, she said hopefully.

  – Is that not rather a dinnertime topic? Saint Sebastian objected. A trifle too responsible for lunch?

  – Umm, she agreed. Or Fido could choose.

  – Alright, said Fido promptly. Why don’t we sell the dismal shop?

  – The next child I have will be a ringtailed possum! she clapped her hands over her ears. Why should she listen to such things? It was her mother, not Felicia, who tried to push the baby back as it was being born. Fido was spared that humiliation. Fido was a love child.

  – All those games of Monopoly he plays against himself. You’ve got property deals on the brain I suppose, old fellow? You see, Fido, the problem of life is not whether to swap Fenchurch Street Station for the Water Works. Sebastian found himself measuring the boy anew, an act of praise. God be thanked for so perfect and complex a child, yes for this deviousness that spiced the intelligence they already knew.

  – Or we could burn the place down and live on the insurance, Fido offered obligingly. (Did you hear me? hinting?)

  – Sir Edgar Ross was a favourite with the Princess, said the aged Felicia. He piled stooks of straw round the kitchen because he said he couldn’t bear another day of English cooking. He was thought a great eccentric. He’d been living at Versailles where the food was always halfway cold. He said the hot food in his own house burnt his palate. Yes, so he swore to heat it up properly if the cooks couldn’t do as they were instructed. And set fire to the straw. I remember it clearly, the flames ran round under stooks like frightened fowls.

  – Really Felicia your conversation has degenerated to a mixture of iced weddingcake and boiled turnip.

  – Did they cook him cold pancakes then Mother?

  – No they just cooked. He had to escape in a hurry. The house burnt down entirely. Nothing standing but two walls with a cluster of chimneys built in 1585. He was a fifty-year-old child, doing everything for the first time. So many were killed. Servants that is.

  – Why didn’t they call the fire-brigade?

  She sighed. People nowadays have no sense of history. The three mouths opened and their blunt primitive teeth dug into red lumps of corned beef. A fly circumnavigated the room once and then clung despairingly to the window.

  – He was not a wicked man in the eyes of his peers the peers. Far from it, she was answering unspoken accusations. They thought him quite the hero for nearly frying to death rescuing the horses.

  This was not a fresh conversation. Something was said every day at lunchtime, th
ey felt driven to observe the sociability of exchanging words. To protect the silence. They cast the sentences as dice for the jackpot of a companionable ease. For the same reason Felicia obliged herself each day to share a portion of what her son and brother ate.

  Outside the window which hadn’t been opened for ten years or sixteen, the steep road doubled about and wriggled down the mountainside. Half a century ago, it had seemed a miracle when the last twenty yard stretch was hacked out with pickaxes, the rubble shovelled off the lip of the ridge and the road first opened. For three weeks the children had to lead horses and cattle over it, backwards and forwards to trample it hard. Right at this moment, the road presented the unusual sight of a visitor, yes, a car toiling up towards the town, jerking through gear changes, dragging its parachute of dust. Fido saw it crawling round bends overhung by bulbous lumps of rock, passing the damp coiling flanks of some prehistoric amphibian. What Felicia saw were globular blue shadows lapping over the vehicle, one giant jellyfish after another … she couldn’t count the number of times she’d been to sea and associated jellyfish with freedom and failure. Sebastian saw a bobbin drawing the golden thread closer to his hand.

  – Why shouldn’t I go for a walk down the hill? asked Fido choosing his weapon.

  – Because you don’t understand, the old man explained gently. We don’t understand the wickedness of the world.

  – Because the policeman would drive here all the way from Yalgoona to get you and shut you away in a cell, that’s why, Felicia mumbled as she chewed the salty meat wishing for something more like real food.