Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  No one at Whitey’s had seen a building being built for seventy years. That was a fact. Seventy years was about half a century before his time, so there were some things he’d have to find out for himself. You knew the kind of frame a house must have though, which was a start. Easy to cut young timber here. So it was that Tony McTaggart went down among the foundations to choose a site, cursing himself and his friends for having demolished old Whitey’s house which would have been perfect. He cut four saplings. He found on old coin, a shilling, half-buried in the soil. Then he washed in the creek, the pure creek, took off his clothes for the first time since the church. And bathed. Stood in the water for the feel of it. He was thinner and his body’s energies had reverted to growing hair, his hairiness having become prodigious. He washed, lay in the creek where men once worked their slavery and greed, he lay recalling times as a boy, the pony races, the whole world as the world had been in those days, not something you questioned or worried about. The years separated him out from his fellows, held him back from their self-confidence and even their religious experience. One thing only was left to him, the vanity of being the strongest among them, until this too was taken away by young Lance and in front of everybody. Lying in the creek, Tony felt the dreadful past begin to slip away from him. He traced the beginning of the creek right up into the clouds and its ending too.

  The streaming water combed through his hairs, those abundant hairs, blond hairs swayed longitudinally down his body emphasizing the shapes of his torso and limbs so that he became a butcher’s drawing to be carved, muscle by edible muscle, falling apart at the touch of blades too sharp to hurt, gently and easily being opened out, a pod, yielding himself and his seed to the knives of water, he became a branch of leaves, a flight of birds held together by the instinct of form. It was wind not water, fire not wind, the rush of time passing through him. The placenta once called Self at long last peeled away.

  He was nobody. He lost the sense of lying on flat stones, the creekbed sank away drawing him down yet his nose remained above the surface, his body deepened, shortening till he was a shape he’d never been before. He was a ribbon of pale light lying along the current, snaking a flag of weed, so thin his sides swayed, long graceful shapes. His head a stone and heavy enough to withstand a million years of this, the water pouring into his whirlpool ears and washing out his clean eyes, swirling down the gutter of his mouth.

  Nobody stood up from the water, his grey-chilled flesh sheathed in silver light, stood in the magnificence of his strength and began life, eating the food he’d gathered. But though he went back to look at the cornerposts he’d cut for his shelter, he did not set them up, he did not remember what they were for, they meant nothing any more. They simply were. The tools in his unopenable box became a memory of shapes of light. But he took up the coin recognizing it as the moon, placed it on his tongue to hide it. He went to a place where two trees had grown together, branches tangling, and there Nobody wooed the living creepers to weave themselves together. He left a hole to crawl in by, and he crawled in. He sat in the dim warmth of his brothers and sisters and sang. Then he listened. Sure enough he could hear the song coming back faintly. The mountain singing. He had to press his ear to the soil to hear it but it was there alright, richer for the harmonies the mountain gave it. He lay where he was, singing and listening. No need to search any more.

  So Nobody came to live in this place where Tony McTaggart and his five friends had camped one night on their quest for the Golden Fleece when Tony had faced the moon as an enemy till it became a vision of the sun and he stared into it (wasn’t he the apprentice of Ping?) so that his head sang with light. But now nothing was the same. A tent of leaves stood dark as an antheap under the trees, gnats gathering round for the warmth of a living body. Sucked plumstones and rabbit bones lay outside in a tidy heap awaiting burial perhaps. The creek muttered. Ancient as prehistoric remains, the vestiges of settlement sank in the ground. Only the rotting sulky with its upraised shafts appeared insectlike and alert on behalf of everything else. And so Nobody slept, woke, watched flowers open to the sun, shrimps close to the moon, frogs establishing nocturnal colonies, he breathed as the mountain itself breathed, transparent, unthinking, concealing the treasure within.

  Seven

  Now listen here Miss Felicia, said George Santayana, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  No wonder then, she explained through the years, that the newspapers keep people ignorant. The rich don’t want us to learn. Whatever hat they wear, they want nothing to do with issues of the spirit. Today they’re the oil lobby, tomorrow the armaments lobby, the pharmaceuticals lobby or the lethal minerals lobby, all of whom recognize the spirit as their enemy and its history as subversion.

  Suppose while you are reading this … suppose you had been aware of what was going on … suppose you’d actually visited Whitey’s Fall as the sole guest at the Mountain Hotel flinging open your upstairs window for the morning to claim you, you would have understood the issues as the senator did not. Think of yourself at the washstand sluicing water from a huge china jug into its rose-painted basin with the scalloped rim, cleansing your hands, the flesh under the nails white with’ cold, then towelling your face and neck, pausing to hear the roosters crowing, magpies ornamenting the countryside with their loops of song, cats and dogs being put out or let in, an old lady over in the gully calling to her cow Myrtle oh Myrtle, Mrs Sophie Schramm bustling in the kitchen below chivvying pans in readiness for the breakfast of fried ham and tomatoes, a bronchitic cough travelling the two miles from Robbie McTaggart’s farm, the cajoling name Myrtle Myrtle filling the place with accents of love. Yes, you would surely have fathomed the issues as the roadbuilders did not, doing their jobs rather than think. Sebastian Brinsmead believed that being human is no accident of birth. If one says I’m doing what I’m told, I wouldn’t be throwing you out if I had any choice, I’ve got enough worries of my own, there’s always somebody worse off, you’ll have to complain to those in the know … this is to put humanness, the whole race, in peril. How quickly tribes die out, industries collapse, economies founder, freedoms are snatched the instant we relax our grip on them, whole empires dissolve. Only one man or woman at a critical time saying no might have prevented Hitler.

  The people of Whitey’s Fall were ready to resist. The parley had failed, the invaders remained ignorant that things could accumulate meaning beyond their exchange value. And with such total faith in money, oh boy did they have a shock coming to them. That night the old courage woke in your veins, the thrilling moment of change.

  Shapes, black shadows on black, were collecting at the patch of common ground beside the Mountain Hotel. Three o’clock: the hour still hugged you with that thick darkness Jehovah sent as a curse on the lawful and orderly Egyptians. The night, perfect as night, could only have been worse from the people’s point of view if it had been raining as well. Uncle remained philosophical, sat in the dust accepting Vivien Lang’s ministrations.

  – You couldn’t think there was any end to a night like this, now could you? Not a star. Anyway they tell us some of them stars is dead already, did you know that, their light takes so long to reach us here. I wish I could believe it, it’d sort of round things out, because so are some of us who’re watchin them.

  – Dear Uncle, she whispered in her cold modulated voice and you could hear her kiss him lightly.

  – Annie would’ve made me soft if she’d have had me to marry.

  Shapes and sounds were drawn to that place, old secretive dangerous shapes, hushed voices, greetings, the clink of solid metal, the squeak of rusty wheels, things trundled and dragged, the night full of purpose.

  – How could you have known they’d all come like this? Vivien asked discreetly.

  – We’re the ones who went through the bushfire. I reckon the day we watched them company miners from the End light off down to the coast with their tails between their legs, that day we stuck together. We’ve never forgo
tten that. We got our disagreements, us fellas, but we think the same. It’s natural everyone has come. Every stick of the town is a reminder we’re family.

  They were puffing in a close group and touching, rustling together their dry vegetation and uttering affirmative syllables. Like most elderly people, they were more at home in the dark than the young. Uncle waited for half an hour to settle. The gathering was complete.

  – We never thought we’d come to this, I shouldn’t wonder, he said. Is there anyone against goin ahead with it? I’ll take it upon meself to state a fact. Up there them machines have dug up more than dirt, are you with me? A shove is as good as a wink. Down the bottom of their cut they’ve scraped the surface a the gold.

  The night held its breath.

  – This mountain’s solid through and through like we’ve always said, millions of tonnes of it. Colour just a bit too deep for the miner to get his hands properly into her. No accident, that. We remember what our lives has been with hard work, it’s given a meanin for our mob. Well there’s two things could happen now as I understand it, eether them fellas dig further till they finally wake up, or else they get stopped and meself I’m all for stoppin them. If yous fall in when I head off, you’re with me.

  He waited politely for any dissidents to creep away home, heads heavy with plans to stake the first claim up there. But not one person moved.

  – Tough luck havin no moon, Uncle continued hoarsely a while later. Still we know our way, we’ll give it a go. Take it easy is my advice, no use rushin and exhaustin ourselves. The first to arrive gets dug in and ready. Others come up behind when they can make it. If yer can’t carry yer gear, Billy’ll push it up in the cart. Right mate?

  – Right, Bill agreed.

  – Them up there, Uncle addressed the blanket of night. Has got a bit of a shock comin. Tomorrer’ll be the funeral of our sister Felissy’s young feller. That buryin is goin to be here at Whitey’s, come what may, and us with our minds at rest about the future. That’s a promise, Felissy. Whitey’s is ours for dyin and livin. They’ve got to cotton on to that. Now for the ladies, this is the plan. Mum, your job’s to take over from Felissy on account a her tragedy. Barricades has to be ready by dawn so’s they can’t sneak up and take us in the back. There’s no time to be lost when you’re dealin with these cunnin bastards.

  – She’ll be jake Uncle, Mum Collins answered briskly. We’ve got a hundred and forty-two chairs ready outside the hall right this minute. That’ll make a barricade to keep out a tank. In addition to which if they try it on, they’ll still have me to deal with.

  – God help them then! Give me yer hand darlin.

  Plainly the time had come; the sky would not clear, no help could be expected from the moon tonight. They began to disperse as the men moved off up the hill. The women regrouped at the School of Arts to organize their barricade. Within minutes the space beside the hotel was deserted, tiny night noises reasserting their usual rhythms, while indoors Fido lay in his own blackness.

  But the cloud did break eventually. Sightlessness evaporated, the lanterns dwindled, a rift of stars flashed, delicately fringeing the verges of scrub. You could see the whole company now, the gentle pace almost a dance, the wavering interplay of figures, the relief of sight touching the clan with energy. Shadows slipped out of the forest to join them, hermit prospectors with weapons slung carelessly on their shoulders, bandicoots and a sociable wombat. A frogmouth flew up ahead on its owl’s wings. The stars travelled with them. Trees floated like sponges in the cool tidal wind; the mountain itself a swimmer’s head of curly hair, face tipped to this side for breath or to speak to you.

  When the first of the insurrectionists arrived at the promontory jutting into a roadstead of newly formed mist, they made their way right out to the point and sat there. This was their objective. The drama could begin. Immediately below, wheel-deep in cloud, floated the drowned barges of road-making machines, fabulous with a freight of tyranny.

  Sebastian and Uncle supervised the disposition of the troops. In bright moonlight the ancient forms lugged their firearms and supplies to vantage points. Billy, hissing and panting as the heavy cart strained to get away from him and dug its wheels into every available rut, took time out to search for a glimpse of Vivien down at the far end of the procession, hunched exhausted over the handlebars of Mr Ian McTaggart’s wheelchair as Mr McTaggart himself clambered out to walk the last stretch as he imagined he could. Changes came over the land in this light, sudden blots of mist or shadow, an army of bayonet blades on the slope gone as soon as seen. Sounds of creatures extinct for a million years crying out again in the earth’s memory.

  Bill Swan handed out blankets in which the oldtimers wrapped themselves against the cold as they crouched waiting. Vivien, refreshed by success, pranced round, tiresomely brisk and matter-of-fact, obliging people to accept hot tea from thermos flasks and vintage 1947 biscuits donated by Felicia. A rind of light emerged round the outline of trees on the horizon. You could taste the dawn on your tongue. Somebody snored already. The twenty-fifth hour of Fido’s death. Billy still felt blood crusting on his face.

  Up front Sebastian’s helmet of hair gleamed silver and tight as grief. Who knows what memories of Fido’s loneliness and complaining imprisonment were revealing their pale underbellies to his net of guilt, what precious moments of laughter on that young Botticelli face? The acid of betrayal coursed through the saint as he recognized his holy tapestry as an excuse for inaction, a kind of tolerance which amounted to oppression.

  Bill unloaded ammunition from the cart into a pram for the sake of its lightweight manoeuvrability.

  The whisper went round that Jack Collins had collapsed and dropped out somewhere along the ridge, back there among the boulders. It was marvellous that he had made it so far, being a man locked up in his lumbago. Vivien was dispatched to find him. The sky dissolved to liquid light, washing out the last stars. One frog down below by the new highway announced its intention of seeking company. The blanketed figures began to shift and shuffle, stretching weary limbs, unloading spare gloves and cartridges, numbly crushing the sandwiches in their pockets. They improved their positions from a military point of view, sighting on the enemy machines, unlikely up there as a coven of Ku Klux Klansmen.

  This was the battlefield: the defenders concealed on the height, the invaders exposed beneath. If the government men wanted trouble they’d get it. They had been given time; another day and they’d possibly have the clearing completed beyond the cut, then gelignite would be little use against them, they’d be through the gap, out of reach of ambush, there’d be no stopping them. From the promontory you could survey the whole area; the natural saddle had been further hollowed out to form a cutting and so the bed of the highway lay deeper beneath their vantage point than anyone expected, its broad flat surface curved away out of sight to the west. Looking due north across the cutting you could even make out the smudge of Yalgoona set among its marshy paddocks. Back the way you’d come, the roofs of Whitey’s Fall nestled in against the mountain flank more than a mile away and, as Sebastian passed round the binoculars, the ladies could be watched busy fortifying their barricade, plying each other with delicacies and scanning the skyline already expecting explosions and gunfire.

  – Reminds me, said Clarrie Lang who was young Lance’s grandfather. Of last time we took to this hill, them girls ran picnic races for us. You remember Ian?

  Ian McTaggart remembered but he said nothing. His fingers plucked irritably at his blanket. Dawn was his time for listening to his garden.

  – I could do with that jacket Bertha knitted me once, he grumbled eventually. She was pretty when she was young, he added inconsequentially. For a few years she was.

  The traces of mist along the gullies began to dry in the sun. A man down there started whistling a popular song. The enemy. He came in sight strolling along the huge bare roadway, stopped and pissed, contemplating the piss, interrupting his tune while he did so, taking it up again when he had fi
nished and shaken the drops off. The grandfathers and great-grandfathers exchanged looks. As one, they felt the urge to move closer to the edge, rising in unison and bobbing up, stepping in time, taking cover and re-emerging: much like a Japanese ritual. They settled right on the brink of the cliff. No need to puzzle over tactics, or question that the pissing man was trespassing. Long since, the community had attained that organic phase where a retraction in one arm of the sea-anemone triggers a general spasm. They were creators of a town, and a way of living in it (or at least with it) that began as complete identity with the mountain … after all, they were the ones who, against all odds and for half a century of failure, refused to move elsewhere. Time to load the weapons. Anxiety imprinted their wrinkles, dimmed their questioning eyes. The labourer sauntered back out of sight, having noticed nothing, to where his mates lay sleeping or waking. Not long to wait. Basher Collins clipped a magazine of rounds into his well-oiled .22 and then helped the older men with breech-loaded shotguns. Uncle opened a case of miscellaneous ammunition. Sebastian and Billy worked together, as the plan was, preparing gelignite charges, aware of the terrible irony in this partnership.

  – Have you only got pointed bullets there Uncle? whispered Mr Ian McTaggart. There’s no art aiming with pointed bullets, he grumbled. Any fool can line up a target and fire. He held out his ancient Mannlicher for admiration till his arms shook. I’ve got me own bullets for her anyhow, reliable round-headers: he had laid in his supply during the year 1916 on the understanding that the Mexican uprising might well have repercussions in New South Wales.

  – You’ll handle em, Uncle agreed placidly. He unwrapped his own weapon bound in oilcloth and displayed with satisfaction the double-barrelled big-game gun, one barrel rifled and the other smoothbore. Elephants is gettin out of hand, he joked un-smilingly.