by Rodney Hall
– I wonder if Maggot and the boys are back? says Billy.
– The School of Arts, Uncle explains, was the only public building in Whitey’s when you come to think of it. The only one they’d a had a right to paint up. No bastard’ll be doin my place that’s for sure.
– Except when you die.
– I’ll last longer than that house a mine, don’t you worry. I made the bugger, he jokes and you can see he’s younger already with black hairs in his eyebrows again and he leans less on his sticks. Oy, how about you marryin that nitwit from Yalgoona, Billo, in memory of yer father.
– You’ve got to be joking. She can take her pick of millionaires now.
– You listen to me young fella, I’m yer grandfather an if I can’t tell you yer business I don’t know who can. Don’t matter if Vivi’s older than you, she’s worth more than all the sheilas in Yalgoona. You treat er right and you won’t regret it. Or else by christ I shall have to come and thump yus in the head. I’m not past it yet, you know.
– I’ll thump you back, you bloody old stickybeak, Billy laughs. He laughs at anything now. The dazzling leaves dance round him, the mountain air tosses brightly across his face, he laughs at his ugly strong wise grandfather, laughs at his concerned expression, at the comical sight of all these great-aunts and great-uncles who won’t die, who won’t even lie down and do as they’re told, laughs at their plodding concentration as they disentangle ropes and set up tent poles, as they shuffle about lugging boxes and baskets, laughs at the joyful panorama where rivers glitter far in the distance and the dense sea of treetops washes down against the shore of calm pastures. Even the flight of parrots rocketing among the branches carries echoes of a meaning you can understand. He laughs with love at his grandfather, head at a deafman’s angle, smelling of sweat, horses, stale piss.
– Bill me boy I can tell what your trouble is. You’re sufferin from an advanced case of youth, that’s what.
Billy admits his own stupidity, trying to blow up the Golden Fleece alone and at night like a criminal, on the say-so of a jealous madman’s secret.
Brinsmeads knew, the parrots are squawking.
Billy accepts them, calmly living out their lives with the power to bring down governments.
– That’s the graveyard you was tellin me about isn’t it? Uncle points with his elbow.
– Yes your dad Albert Swan died 1894.
– We used to picnic on them graves every year on All Souls’ Day. Don’t ask me why, but it seemed a good enough custom at the time. When I was your age, Uncle reverted to a previous subject. By jesus I gave them all a headache.
– You wouldn’t be able to remember that far, would you?
Uncle’s retort is interrupted by his hound Bertha barking a way up the back. People collect in a huddle beside the steam plough, then a deputation comes this way hastily.
– What’s hatching do yer think?
So the neighbours gather round Uncle as their natural leader. Poor Ian McTaggart is left behind, a figurehead of his generation, sitting helpless on the grass arguing gently with his crippled wife, already on the lookout for a site to recommence his labour, a place for the new garden of circles, to be the last obsolete garden, and asking when Tony will come home to begin the work of carting the plants which can be moved. An event is unquestionably brewing; another group forms by the ammunition tent. Come and look at this, people are saying. Somebody’s here before us. Yes, incredibly as you draw close you hear them say the place is inhabited. The Swans and others are drifting towards the water-hole, hearing how a Collins and a Buddall went to check out the water supply when the dog started barking and they noticed at the edge of the scrub these two trees growing in amongst each other, woven together by creepers, a tent of leaves. They are hearing the story with curiosity, alarm, disbelief, already arguing that it is impossible though they haven’t seen for themselves yet, that Kel is dead and none of the new prospectors would have come this way. They reach the spot and sure enough find a tent of living leaves outside which is a steel toolbox and a heap of small bones swarming with ants.
Bill Swan stands among his forebears, alone. The feeling comes over him that he can be the ground under his own feet, he can experience his weight, quite heavy on his two heels, also the weight of his trunk bearing on his pelvis. Alone, he no longer finds the world a place of laughter, he grows cold thinking of Vivien with her burden of hopes, climbing towards this new disaster. He can feel his neck carrying his head and the head heavy with a new turmoil. He should have guessed! His arms hang weights from his shoulders. He opens and clenches the hand in his pocket so the lumps of muscle can be felt rising along his forearm. This is no comfort. He is weak with the knowledge of that one punch, Tony’s first and only blow against him. There is a puzzle here he is not able to solve. Bill is not afraid, exactly, but the glittering summer of a few moments ago has darkened. He glances up at the mountain pulsing with life of its own. And assembles his courage.
– That’s Tony’s toolbox for sure, he says.
– Are yus in there Tony boy? calls Uncle in a strangely courteous voice. The dog wags her tail.
– Yes, replies Nobody.
– It’s us mate, says Uncle. Us come to live here.
– We been worried about you Tony, Olive McAloon croons. Come on out.
A gentle singing issues from the leaf tent.
The citizens face one another, assessing what they dread this might signify. Billy freezes in a pool of loneliness exercising the muscles of his arm, ready for anything.
– Are yer comin out to say goodday to yer grandpa and us, Uncle asks eventually (listening to the song, that voice, hearing something in it he recognizes). His tone is even more careful when he repeats his invitation.
At the bottom of the leaf wall a hole opens and a shaggy fair head pokes out. Tony wriggles on the ground till he’s clear. He stands up, smiling. He knows them of course. He thinks he is still Tony. But they see immediately that he is Nobody. His face works at holding the smile, painfully extreme. Long blond hairs sleek silkily down his body. And his face smiles also at Billy. Yes he recognizes Billy especially. Billy smiles shyly in return feeling a mug. They are no longer friends. They smile as intimate strangers and not with the same feelings. A wind whispers into the mountainside. Grasshoppers are busy communicating. The old people stand in the sunshine looking at the boy they knew who has grown up to be Nobody and must be respected. Yes age is, finally, irrelevant. To say he is young would not make sense. To say he is nineteen would make no sense at all.
– Winnin form, Uncle comments. We thought we’d let yous know we’re here to settle.
The black snake that has been curled beside him in the warmth glides out to enquire into the disturbance.
They all stare at Nobody as they back away, and this becomes a notable moment. Nobody is still smiling at them. He knows them, he knows. But they must explain him, placate him for the water they need.
Our forest, Uncle will say. With its bellbirds and lizards, well that’s the forest has got inside Tony’s skull. Inside Tony is a forest a cockatoos that he’s listenin to and flowers that he’s touchin and smellin. He was lookin for this, lookin and lookin, Uncle will say. He was feelin lost all them years, but now he’s found it, if you ask me, and singin like that he’s singin to us out from among his trees. He’s a long way off, that’s my feelin, singin in the distance. And all of us is outside his forest of birds and animals, that’s why he don’t speak. What’s the point a speakin? He couldn’t be understood, so he has to think about that and it makes him a bit queer if you’re not used to it. But I’d say this forest is in all of us, do you know that? It’s just an idea I been tossin about. For us, we hear it faint-like, now and again and only when we’re not tryin. But it’s there. He hears it the whole time.
Olive McAloon rescues a forgotten experience, yes she was a child taken to church by her mother and seeing her first Christmas crib, the doll figures, wisemen, coming so far and all to see an or
dinary baby, and having to be content with that. She was nervous and angry at the painted faces looking so un-blinkingly. She felt a feeling then, and she remembers it now.
They move back: they will begin the work of water-carrying and pitching tents in a moderated mood, thinking about him with his toolbox outside. Yes it’s good to know what’s happened to the young fellow.
The crisis over, Nobody crawls into his place among the vines, warm again, a great responsibility resting in his heart. So this is what he has been waiting for. They have come to him and they will stay. He has established his place, the respect due to him, his freedom to do what he can do. The snake coils in its nest.
Billy thinks of Vivien again, Vivien and himself in Brinsmeads’ shop clearing the goods off the shelves, the dead cat glaring at them from an open box of eucalyptus lollies, the shop whispering miserable, miserable, and as they left with the last load for the dray, the double-doors clashing to behind them batting at a mob of ghosts rushing to follow. HABERDASHERY BOOTS & SHOES (on one door), PROVISIONS PATENT MEDICINES (on the other) trembling with gold, mocking them because they are the new storekeepers, the living generation of Rememberers. Being together now won’t be the same as it was. He sees something trivial in love, small warm and ridiculous, something that reminds him astonishingly of his own mother and father. Were they in love? he asks himself with wonder and disillusion. In a flash Billy realizes how his mother engineered that eternal game of euchre, that she lost by skill so brilliant he never saw it, lost for the sake of love. And his father, yes, his father cut down the tallow-wood also for love of, admit it, Bill himself How this was, he cannot yet figure out. Yet he knows it. And as Vivien approaches along the track of smashed scrub calling Get up there! hup! hoy! to the bewildered livestock he hopes this will be their kind of love, except that he has enough of his grandfather in him to laugh more at life, and Vivien’s way will be different from his mother’s.
– You could trust her to meddle where she wasn’t wanted, declares Miss Bertha McAloon referring to the late Felicia Brinsmead. She was into everything except the bath, that one.
Rose Swan, a mouse no longer, manages the Collins bull on a short halter.
– Git the hell along with you, screeches Miss McAloon routing a heifer from among the wattles.
Billy watches his grandmother and hears the admiring jokes people make at the expense of her short temper. He is filled with pity for the strong-willed. Vivien comes toward him with that loping walk. They stand together but he does not claim the liberty of kissing her, or possessing her in public. And instead of joking about the trek, provoking her to compete as usual, he says something he has just learnt.
– Are you tired love?
– She’d better not be, Uncle interrupts. Because we’re goin to need the store opened as soon as the gear’s unpacked. Look lively Eggie, time to set up the new pub, mate, the booze has come down to you from Jasper at last.
– Shove off Uncle, Billy suggests. He takes Vivien’s hand and tells her about Tony.
– I have something terrible to tell you, she confesses. It happened between him and me. I can’t stay. I could never live where Tony is now.
– Perhaps I know and he knows, Billy says to give her strength as he walks her slowly towards the waterhole, he in the light, she in the darkness, towards the tent of creepers where the wild man lives with his experience, strolling away from the comfort of everybody else, and on their own mission.
But then you see them stop to whisper, long entreaties and tender offerings coming out with such a rush her whole body flows towards him and her hair gets mixed with this, the dark among the dark. You watch him curve his hand to her belly, so that everyone can tell he is proud, feeling the new life stir. Their heads are in the sunlight, which also pours steadily on the mountain. They live on the food of that land and it’s hard to tell them among the flowering trees.
– Miss Brinsmead and I shopped everywhere, Sebastian confides to the speechless Nobody in the secrecy of the leaf tent, to see if a better society could be bought for us with the Fleece. But we never found one.
