Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  Billy groaned, his restraint breaking.

  – Next round’s on me, said Uncle distinctly. Another beer Bill?

  Billy nodded, gazing at the television announcer who was explaining the market price of carrots.

  – Carrots, he can talk! commented Uncle scornfully. He doesn’t know a thing about it you can see that. Someone else writes it all out for him, I’ll be bound. He wouldn’t know a carrot if he had one for a dick. Winnin form!

  Jasper gathered the glasses, swilled them out and refilled them. Uncle raised his new beer the moment it was set in front of him.

  – Here’s to Remembering, ay Bill? the old man was the only one able to refer openly to religion without offence.

  – To Remembering, Uncle.

  – Was it clear?

  – Clear.

  Jasper presented his back. He swigged some more whisky.

  – I’ve never had a Remembering, Tony admitted, and as he bent his head, Billy noticed the unscarred neck, smooth and thick as a young tree. Though I’ve tried.

  Seven

  A little truck wheezed and spat its way off the upper track into the main street, where it proceeded with extreme care along the exact centre before pulling slightly to one side and stopping far enough from the kerb to seem abandoned. Having twice checked that the handbrake was fully applied, a woman climbed out, a tiny, principled person who thought before she acted and therefore had the manner of someone who knows precisely what she wants. As for her black bun, her sober cardigan, her darned stockings and the shoes she herself had so often repaired, these she gave attention only as they were due for it. Once ready they were forgotten. She would no more have reassured herself (with a hand patting her hair) that the bun was still in position, than she would have glanced critically at her shoes when out of the house. She also left her truck without a backward glance. As years ago she put behind her the dragons of wisdom. She walked into the twilight of the welder’s workshop.

  – Mr Ping, the Chinese woman called. You know I don’t come here for nothing. She peered into the corrugated dimness, in among chapels of metallic symbols: crosses and crooks, moons, crescents and mandalas, to where the crucibles of black oil and the faint acidity of labelled bottles were ranged on a workbench. Finally she discerned the man-shape she was looking for. He knelt at the far end of the place in a crude apse; he was beneath a tractor elevated on the hoist, an altar supported by its gleaming silver column. She felt respectful in this place even though she never intended to. The man turned his torso in answer to her voice, a dying shower of sparks falling from his hand. A wisp of smoke. One glove still held the blue-tongued torch angled away from him in that practised gesture, the flame menacing with a will of its own. His head, a square steel mask, canted stiffly up to observe the intruder through black glass.

  – Mr Ping, she said again.

  Mr Ping didn’t answer, but the mask was attentive.

  – You must do something for the sake of Alice, she needs a vet. This is all I came to say. You know my misfortunes, she added. And I ask for nothing. Not for my rights, because of what has been. Only for Alice. For help.

  Mr Ping’s mask waited. Concentration itself taut enough to snap at a touch, or ring like a harp-string. The place accumulated mysterious hints of large shapes. The tractor loomed above her, she had advanced right into the sanctuary. Any minute, perhaps, it could roll on top of the welder now his attention was diverted. But the longer she had to wait the more she grew able to use the infiltration of light, so that those sacred symbols defined themselves as the functional, the greasy adjuncts of his trade: wheels brackets vices struts and crosstrees.

  – Mr Ping? Her neat black head compelled attention. Suddenly she thought it couldn’t be him she was talking to. Too small for the boy, she thought, it’s a complete stranger! No, but the boy’s in the shadow perhaps and it’s not proper to bring out my troubles in front of the boy.

  – Is he here then? she asked.

  The mask said no silently.

  – Well? she demanded, I’m waiting for you. The touch of annoyance being her pride showing. She was embarrassed for him that he could descend to demeaning them both, so she spoke again to cover up for him.

  – There’s nothing more I can do, the truck would never make the journey to fetch the vet from Yalgoona, not down the mountain nor up. And everybody has their own troubles, you can’t telephone him today because it’s Thursday.

  Silence congealed round the two people breathing that tank of oily dim air. Tiny sounds from outside embedded themselves in the space: a paperbag bowling along in the dust, a swirl of wind through the peppertree, a distant dog barking and, even more remote, the airborne bellow of a cow in pain.

  – You know this, Mr Ping, she continued with gentle determination. You know how hard things have been. I’ve had poor Alice a long time. She’s only just finished with that lazy Iris’s calf; Alice being the last milker I’ve got left, it fell to her to suckle it. And I reared Alice from the bucket when she lost her mother. Well the calf died and now she’s to have her own it won’t come. She keeps lying down but there’s nothing to help the pain. You can hear that if you listen, even from here. I’m down low myself, last month I had to put Iris to the market, not that it gave me more than a minute’s regret once the calf had died, but the country is dead, there’s no living in it any more. And that’s a fact we’re all aware of. Not with housecows at any rate. Iris went under the hammer for sixteen-thirty. Sixteen dollars and thirty cents, that is, for a whole healthy fat beast, lazy and inhuman as she was, but she had such a bloom on her, you had to love that bloom, you could eat her as she was, no cow could have looked better. And with steak in the shops between one and two dollars a pound. But by the time they’d taken their auction fees all I had was my cheque for nine dollars twenty-five. I could have cried. I did cry too. I’d have used more than that in shoe leather just running about after the animal, one way and another. I could have made more if I’d butchered her and minced her all up and sold her as dogmeat, I’d have cleared more than nine twenty-five. Couldn’t have been less. And don’t say it’s no use crying over it now, I’ve got to live since the school shut down.

  She inspected the mask for a sign of comprehension.

  – I’m asking nothing for me, she said. Only for Alice who’s been good to you too across the years.

  The answer clear as a shot rang in her head. Nothing could be done to save him exposing his mean spirit. It disgraced her to have him like that. Abruptly she hurried to the door, escaping. A vessel of helpless misery, propelling herself into the sunlight. And thus she was observed by a woman she had never met who stood outside the shop opposite.

  The woman, prisoner of neutrality, watched a Chinese lady rush from the welder’s, her eyes big with tears. Her hands, belying the composure of her hair, groped blindly for the door of her ancient truck.

  Mrs Ping had no choice. Really it was madness to attempt the mountain road. Being a disciple of reason, she knew this.

  Come on, the mountain urged her. This way.

  Her truck already in motion, how could she resist, and somebody ran out to cheer her along. Alice knew help was on the way; no use saying Alice was a simple brute. The hot sickening milk, far from being her gift, the one thing the cow longed to be rid of; if it didn’t whine a hymn among the clanging pails Alice could not care what happened to it. Mrs Ping was the one to understand this.

  Downhill all the way, said the mountain.

  – It is, Mrs Ping conceded, letting the clutch ratchet in.

  Also, motion soothes the troubled spirit. She had no choice, the impossible mission entrusted to her.

  What can go wrong? asked the mountain.

  Leaving the morning tea at Mum Collins’s with qualms to brood on, Vivien had arrived back at the main street in time to notice several events: three men walking up to the hotel in single file including the blond lad who had carried her bags the day she arrived; and secondly the small truck parked like a lifesiz
e toy, a crazy vehicle with rolled tin mudguards and an upright windscreen. But she had matters on her mind. Abstractedly, Vivien recalled herself as a child in the woods with a man who exposed himself to her so she ran away in horror of the hair growing round it. She was definitely on Elaine’s side; a mother scared for her kids. She ought to have invited her for a cup of tea, because Elaine was the first person in Whitey’s Fall Vivien had injured. That gave them a kind of intimacy. Ordinary routines threatened to claim her again. Yes, she gazed out over the valley. On a clear day you could see the ocean, she knew this. But not today, thanks to the dust haze. Now her attention was claimed by something moving down in the valley. A blue car a long way off, crawling up the road, climbing the first cluster of hairpin bends. She watched it weaving in and out of sight. The power of the climb inexorable. Unexpectedly she was witnessing a drama the very next minute. A Chinese lady running out of that big shed, every movement expressing tragedy, scrambling into her truck. The motor ticked like a frantic clock. Vivien looked away politely, not to stare at the driver’s mouth set tense as a learner being examined, her eyes staring at a road of tears. The handbrake released, the crazy rattletrap of flat plates and gill-vents lurched into motion. Though she juggled the wheel, she gave the impression of remaining desperately immobile. A wave of dust flowed over Vivien who flapped one hand in front of her nose. From the upper ridge that damned cow began bellowing again, enough to send anyone mad. Then she was part of the drama: she had noticed something wrong.

  – Hey, she shouted. Look out. Stop. Your tyre’s flat at the back. Stop! And now the observer herself ran across the road, just in time to slap the sideboard of the moving vehicle, dislodging from the timber a puff of termite dust. Yet the Chinese woman did not stop, gave no sign of noticing her, steering the hobbling lorry out along the road and swinging its blunt nose quivering down the hill.

  – O God, Vivien whispered. She looked about wildly. Who might help? Miss Brinsmead of course. She blundered into the doorway of the shop and just as she was about to hammer on the door, one of the holland blinds was pulled aside a crack, enough for the child who held it to contemplate her with steady, knowing eyes.

  – She’ll kill herself, Vivien screamed.

  Fido recognized the woman his mother loved. He knew his mother loved her the moment she poked her nose into the shop bringing that letter a week ago.

  She stood panting and shocked. The child disappeared, dropping the blind back into place. Vivien banged at the door. She shouted help, emergency! already losing hope. But then, thankfully, there were footsteps inside. The blind was pulled back a second time and the rescuer, the perpetual Miss Brinsmead, confronted her.

  – Closed for luncheon, the shopkeeper’s voice hooted, muffled by the locked door.

  – It’s urgent. Miss Brinsmead, there’s a woman … Vivien began frantically. Accident! A truck! she shouted at the stupid creature.

  – No thank you all the same, Miss Brinsmead declined remotely and let the blind drop again.

  The bloody fool of a woman.

  There was nothing Vivien could do. Out on the road once more, suspended in dust, watching the truck wobble into the first bend. Snap out of it. She ran to the welder’s workshop.

  – Who’s here? she shrieked into the spitting darkness, peered at a pool of electric light underneath a tractor. That lady will kill herself you know, she explained shakily. It’s miles to the bottom of the range.

  The oxy torch threw off a constellation of sparks. No reply.

  – Please, she cried. Please.

  The welder snapped back his mask and brandished the hissing flame still alive in his hand. His aged Chinese face nestled in sparse white hair.

  – What is it then? he spoke slowly in an Australian accent at the furthest extreme of nasality.

  – We’ve got to help, she wept at the responsibility.

  He said nothing to this.

  – Someone has to do something, she pleaded. She’s got a flat tyre but she didn’t notice.

  – How do you know she didn’t? Mr Ping drawled raising questions you’d never think of. Vivien saw again the woman’s tear-heavy eyes, her carelessness of who might be watching, and not a hair out of place to betray her weakness.

  – There can’t be any reason on earth for not helping, she retorted in a burst of anger.

  Mr Ping sighed perhaps. Or whispered incomprehensible syllables to himself. The mask snapped shut, the flame made contact with metal and assumed its intended meaning. Outside, the wind freshened and that cow could be heard clearly now, launching its succession of single hoarse yells into the valley and across the mountainside.

  Had he meant suicide? What sort of place was this after all? His voice had filled her with horror; it was… yes… not interested in what she said. Vivien ran up the hill. Her only hope, the Mountain Hotel and the giant halfwit.

  Mrs Ping fought the wheel. Her truck slewed down through the gravel, skidding round corners, the brakes useless. She wrenched the gearstick, her leg pumping at the clutch. The truck went faster. She had to, she would, she must force it, must, had got to force it out of third. The wheels whined into the next curve inches from the precipice. Ahead on the coiling road below, Mrs Ping saw the impossible: an approaching car.

  Felicia Brinsmead stood in the dim shop after she let fall the blind, robbed of motion. Naturally she had been upset at young Vivien’s agitation and had heard the word accident too. Her affections made her yearn to help, but she needed the way of least pain. She struggled against love which tempted her to rush out and involve herself in futile suffering. The accident would happen. Her mind worked at it, she murmured the name Mercy Ping; what more could she afford to do, love being a complication too appalling? And who was she to care so much about Mercy Ping of all people? She sighed for lost opportunities.

  – I know I know, she told the shop irritably. You don’t have to comment on the obvious.

  The sardine fishermen in their sou’westers mimicked her O O. The frozen chickens persisted with that silly drama of holding their breath. The convolvulus flowers eavesdropped, but she understood too much for them. Back in the kitchen, Felicia explained to her brother what was happening.

  – The poor good woman! he cried, and he raised himself from the chair to see out of the window, his nimbus of hair trembling to its roots, his saint’s face disarranged.

  – Yes, Felicia declared. On the road.

  She watched with him as the small truck swept down out of sight, still safe enough till obscured by the bushes and vines that ran riot in their back garden.

  – Poor Mercy, he prayed. So little has gone right for her through the years though it’s difficult to think how she deserved such a miserable lot.

  – There you go with your moral nothings, as if we deserve anything, good or bad.

  – Cause and effect, he explained still watching the road.

  – It’s all causes, she retorted. It’s never effects, till everything’s wound up. The big bang.

  – Day of Judgment.

  – Certainly not. The idea of a Day of Judgment, even if one were so simple-minded as to believe it, would be no more than another cause; bliss or damnation, mindlessness or torment. Fido! she went on without a break or change of tone. You haven’t finished your meal. Fido.

  – Poor Mercy, the unselfish woman.

  – Fido never answers. Never.

  – Well you would insist on bringing him up with your modernistic system. What else could you expect? Had it been left to me he’d have begun with ancient Greek and The Lives of the Saints.

  – My modernistic ideas! You miserable good foolish creature. I don’t have ideas, I accept myself as I am.

  – The problem with rationality, he replied mildly, is that its consequences are unpredictable, thinking of his Wolfgang Amadeus Fido, his loved-of-God.

  – Who wants to predict? I’m sure I don’t. It’s all inevitable, so therefore futile. So much for reason, mere tampering with fate. I hope I’ve neve
r been guilty of inventing an idea in my life. I certainly didn’t think up any system of education for Fido, I can assure you of that for a start. Why am I imprisoned to suffer your endless purity? You are a monster, Sebastian, did you know that? An unnatural monster, simple like a saint is simple: passing the poison with an open hand, so to speak. Smiling as if death weren’t breathing down your collar. Which it is. Oh my goodness, you callous man, how you make me suffer, keeping my mind in check as you do.

  Miss Brinsmead picked up Rastus the cat and carried him cradled in her hands as she had once borne sacred reliquaries, back into the peace of the shop. From its paddock in the high neck of the valley, that cow gave one shocking bellow which silenced the birds. Everything listened for a minute to the stillness of what had happened.

  Eight

  In the pub, the smoked mirrors caught and sealed that gathering of ancient heads, presenting them as a gallery lovingly softened by the haze, and among them the two young men as unlikely missionaries carrying news nobody understood. The place was quiet and the drinkers immobile. Bubbles rose gently in the beer.

  – I once heard a voice, said Uncle picking up the thread of Billy’s unspoken thoughts. Singing in the middle of the night, it was. Coming from miles away. My dog Bertha gave one bark and then sat down. Unaccountable that. You’d think she was listenin. A man’s voice. It sang and sang as if there was no endin and nothin else to do. Never heard anythin in all my days so beautiful. In the still of night, he said. Not even Annie’s violin. I was sober too, he added to combat their disbelief. I was sittin up as wide awake as I am now. You don’t believe me. It wasn’t no dream and it wasn’t no Remembering. Wasn’t the radio. It was right here somewhere in our district. Up home I was, and all of a sweat though it was a cold night clearin to a touch of the frost.