Bony and the Black Virgin

by Arthur W. Upfield

  The women had to pass Bony on their way to the clothesline, and when they were about to pass again with the empty wheelbarrow, Bony was standing, and greeted them with a comradely smile. The fat one smiled in return and giggled Mrs Nuggety frowned, then was intrigued.

  “How’s work going today?” he asked, and they halted when the first natural shyness had been conquered.

  “Good-oh! How you doing these days?” replied the little woman, whose eyes were examining Bony feature by feature, and then his arms, torso, and legs. “Pretty good rain, eh?”

  “Good black-feller rain,” agreed Bony, returning the careful scrutiny. The other woman, who had been bending over the barrow handles, stood up and giggled. She said:

  “Plenty tobacco, plenty rain. By and by more rain, more tobacco.”

  She, too, was scrutinized from head to foot. No one was embarrassed. The women were captivated by the colour of the stranger’s eyes.

  They moved on to the laundry, and Bony sat again on a log, and smoked.

  These people, he knew, were advancedly assimilated, for complete assimilation isn’t achieved by the aborigine via swift passage from one State to another, as the foreign national is granted citizen rights at a Town Hall ceremony. Assimilation is gradual, and requires several generations to produce the Mr and Mrs Smiths and Browns who live in city suburbs.

  The people now occupying Bonaparte’s attention were two generations towards assimilation. They were still inhibited by their traditions, and still, at least partially, influenced by their origins. Proof lay in the absence of a front tooth in each woman, knocked out when sealed into their tribe. Proof also was to be seen in two short cicatrices like chevrons between their breasts, denoting they belonged to a man. At this time they interested Bony in determining the degree of assimilation by the white race.

  Robin Pointer came from the side veranda wheeling an old pram loaded with articles to wash, actually, house curtains, and, parking the load at the laundry doorway, she came and sat with Bony, and asked for a cigarette.

  “I’ve earned it, Bony. Do make one.”

  With unusual care, he rolled a cigarette, tamped the ends with a match, and offered it to her to lick the paper. Having struck the match, he was regarded above the flame by studiously dark eyes, and she said:

  “Day off? Holiday?”

  “I shall begin work presently, when you are free.”

  “What have I to do with whether you work or not?”

  “It often happens that a man has to be prodded to work by a woman,” Bony declared. “Besides, I have been working. I’ve been overseeing those two boys cutting and carting fuel for the laundry. Quite exhausting.”

  “It would be,” Robin mocked. “Poor hard-working man! Never mind, though. It’s gone half past nine, and morning tea is ready. Would you like to accompany me thither?”

  “Them is encouraging words, lady. And then yon.”

  “Yon?”

  “Thither to the morning tea and yon to inspect the homestead under your guidance.”

  “Ah! More mischief, Bony. Well, to be forewarned is to be armed. Full of clichés this morning, aren’t we?”

  “As the boys are full of questions.”

  An hour later they set off on the ‘inspection’, and Robin wanted to show him the motor shed, but he suggested the shearing shed, as he knew all about motor sheds. Then at the shearing shed he confessed that he was boringly familiar with shearing sheds, and suggested visiting the aborigines in their temporary camp.

  About the shearing shed human traffic had been light, and where the wind had piled sand against the walls and the posts of the drafting yards the grass was already six inches high, and the plants of buckbush and wild spinach were beginning to mass. In the sugar gums the cicadas shrilled ceaselessly their love calls. They ought to have left their hibernating ground holes in the spring. Now it was autumn.

  “Why do you want to visit the aborigines?” Robin asked, and could not prevent the betrayal of strain.

  “All tourists want to talk with the aborigines,” countered Bony. “For me they are of special interest, anthropological interest. We shall gather them about us, and you can tell me if one lamb is missing from the fold.”

  The aborigines were camped in a small grove of uniformly shaped cabbage trees, providing shade and a perfect setting for those who sat or lounged under them. The children playing in the sun would normally have raced to the protection of the trees at sight of the visitors, but, recognizing Robin, they ran to meet them.

  Escorted by the children, who, singularly enough, were either naked or dressed in flimsy finery, Robin and Bony approached the camp until met by Nuggety Jack and Dusty and several other men.

  “We were out on a little walkabout,” Robin explained, “and Inspector Bonaparte said he would like to visit you all.”

  All eyes were directed to Bony, serious eyes in happy faces. One naked toddler clutched Robin’s hand, and another, not to be outdone, shyly touched Bony’s hand and became immensely proud when his grubby fingers were held.

  “Been a wonderful rain,” he remarked to the men. “Mr Long says that as you did such a great job making the rain, Mr Pointer is to hand out another case of jam, and another box of tobacco.

  They grinned appreciation, and Nuggety thought to strike the iron when hot. He said:

  “Getting pretty low in sugar. Any chance of a bit?”

  “We can tell Mr Long that Mr Pointer added a twenty-pound bag.”

  Nuggety, delighted by his victory, asked:

  “The old woman doing her stuff in the laundry, Miss Robin?”

  “She and Mrs Dusty were working hard when we left,” replied Robin. “Why, Larry, what did you do to your face?”

  “I fell over and hit it with a stick, Miss Robin,” replied the little boy, whose cheek and forehead were badly cut and bruised.

  “Let me see.” Robin knelt to examine the nasty wound, and the other children crowded about her. “You must come to the house and have it bathed properly, Larry.”

  The women and girls now had joined the group of men, and some of them evidently had hastily slipped on their best dresses before appearing. Bony noticed two girls of the same age and slim build wearing dresses of identical colour and style. Observing his interest, they smiled, and whispered to each other, and revealed a missing tooth in each mouth. An old woman laughed at something said by another, and she, too, had a tooth missing. A young woman, who was wearing only a skirt, took a baby from another woman and proceeded to suckle it. All the women and the older girls bore between their breasts the chevron cicatrice of marriage, or promise in marriage.

  Robin’s popularity with these people was plainly evident. The smaller children clustered about her, and the girls asked questions, one even asking if she had other picture magazines ‘with new dresses in them’. The men wanted to hear about Bony’s origin: Where did he come from? Had he been a policeman all his life? Was he married, and how many children did he have? Their chests and arms bore the cicatrices of orthodox initiation.

  Hitherto unaware of her presence, Bony saw the young woman Pointer had called Lottee, whom Mrs Long wanted at the homestead for another spell of domestic work. She was now with the elderly women standing behind their men.

  “Oh, by the way, Lottee,” he said, beckoning slightly with his head. “Mrs Long again asked if you would like to go to the river and housemaid for her.”

  The men parted to permit the girl to stand nearer, and Lottee shook her head. The space between her and Bony was bridged by their eyes, and Bony felt the personality behind her fearless gaze.

  “Like I told Mr Pointer, I don’t want to go to the river,” she said, her voice low, the words distinct and without accent.

  “Don’t want to leave the old man, you see, Inspector,” said Nuggety Jack, and everyone laughed, including Lottee.

  The girl did not have a front tooth missing. She did not bear the mark of a man’s woman on her chest, for although she was pleasingly clad in
a bright blue dress, the low neckline permitted Bony to glimpse that much.

  How old? These girls mature early. Perhaps eighteen. At first sight that might be a reasonable guess. For an aborigine, she was good-looking, and the more one did look at her, the more one noted the refinement of features and the entire absence of any trace of mixed ancestry. Bony was strongly reminded of Marie, his wife, when, as youth and maid, they had been married and ran away together to the haven they made.

  This girl wasn’t a half-caste as was Marie, but she had Marie’s brown eyes, which were such wonderful windows to Marie’s calm spirit that later stresses had never ruffled. This girl was now regarding Bony without bashfulness or coquetry, regarding him curiously, judging him; and deep in his mind was the image of his wife when they were young, and not so young.

  “Very well, I’ll tell Mr Long you don’t want to go,” he said casually, and bent to the tot still clinging to his hand. He recalled other Lottees who had this same elusive quality, so difficult to pinpoint. Because they were rare, they persisted in memory. It was not feminine magnetism, although this was present, but rather an aloofness of spirit which nothing mundane could influence.

  As he stood up, his gaze rose from her shapely ankles, remarkable in an aborigine, to her shapely body, and to her neck, from which was suspended a red cord attached to the inevitable dilly-bag concealed by her dress. For a moment, only he and she existed. In that moment their eyes met, and hers did not waver.

  “I admire your bracelet,” he said easily. “A charm bracelet! Pity you lost one of the horses. Have you had it long?”

  “Long time now,” interposed Nuggety Jack, and Dusty supported him. “I give it to her when she come seventeen,” and again the Medicine Man backed him.

  “Let me see, please,” Bony requested, offering an inviting hand. He slipped the bracelet from her wrist. Fine silver chains held a tiny black horse and a tiny brown one. There was no horse attached to the third chain. His eyes challenged her, but, like his wife, she had the power to defeat his intention with calm and steady appraisal.

  “You know, Lottee, you can be lucky,” he said lightly, and the men about them laughed. He held out his other hand, palm upward, and on the palm the white horse.

  “I must be,” she agreed, and for the second time smiled into his eyes. “Where did you find it?”

  “On the kitchen woodheap. I was talking to the boys this morning, and saw it between two old blocks. As I told you, you can be lucky.”

  “Thank you, Inspector. That’s where I must have lost it.”

  When he turned away he couldn’t decide if there was alarm or mockery in her voice.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  They who Question

  THAT neighbourly call just now roused my curiosity,” Robin said, when passing the store, fronted by a long bench. She suggested they sit there, and that he make two cigarettes. “What do you think of our Lottee?”

  “A fine-looking girl for an aborigine. How old would she be?”

  “Twenty-four last January.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “How ... How old am I? Now, look you here, Mister Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, it was my curiosity which was roused, not yours.”

  “No matter. I can ask your father.” Having made the cigarettes he struck a match, handed her a cigarette and said deliberately: “Those that ask questions should be prepared to answer others. I think Lottee is rather unusual. You do, too, I take it.”

  “Very,” agreed Robin, adding as an afterthought, “for an aborigine.”

  “I saw that she isn’t married or promised in marriage. I noticed, too, that she hasn’t a front tooth knocked out like the other women. How old did you say you are?”

  “Twenty.... Stop it, Bony. Does your wife ever want to shake you till your teeth drop out?”

  “Only in play,” he replied. “At the moment you and I are not playing. I asked you how old you are, when I know the answer, because my mind was off at a tangent, and didn’t want to bother returning. You are two years older than Lottee. You are gifted and educated, and she can read and write. And yet, Robin, compared with her you are naive. Don’t take offence at that. I, too, have not her depth.”

  The girl examined her cigarette, and gazed pensively towards the main house. Presently Bony said:

  “So many people fail to see these aborigines for what they are. To regard them as uncouth savages is such a boost for the ego, and yet, search as you might, you won’t find a moron among them. I know an aboriginal head man who might have skipped five thousand years to come down to this age, for mankind has deteriorated mentally and spiritually. Lottee gave me the same impression as that head man did.”

  “I don’t like her,” Robin said, and Bony told her he was aware of it. “I mean,” amended Robin, “I mean, I don’t dislike her for the impression you received. She has a kind of feline power all about her, and within, which is too much for my ego. She makes me feel ignorant and small, and I resent it. After all she is only an aborigine. Now tell me truly, what does she do to you?”

  “She is most tactful. She doesn’t speak of temptation.”

  Abruptly Robin turned to him and gripped his hand.

  “Stop fencing. Where did you find that horse?”

  “Is that important?”

  “Very. Tell me.”

  “You tell me why it is so important for you to know.”

  “It’s not that important.” Robin stood. “We’d better go to the house. Lunch will be called any minute. We’re always at loggerheads; anyway, I think you are beginning to bore me.”

  Standing with her, Bony laughed openly and delightedly, and colour mounted to her face, and anger blazed. “I wish you were a little boy, and not as old as my father, my grandfather actually.”

  “There could come a time when to lean on an ancient reed is better than to lean upon the wind.” Now serious once more he added: “We’ll talk again sometime before the explosion. I have a premonition of an impending explosion.”

  “Perhaps, afterwards, we won’t be always quarrelling, Bony.”

  “Perhaps, afterwards, we may be in tiny pieces.”

  Jim Pointer appeared on the veranda to call Bony to the office telephone, and when Bony begged to be excused, Robin’s eyes were wistful.

  Closing the door, he picked up the receiver to hear Mawby say:

  “Reference Number Four, Inspector. No trace of him in Broken Hill between the dates in question. As requested, I sent Sefton north as far as Soak. He has just returned, wasn’t once bogged. The Jorkins say they hadn’t seen Number Four at their place for at least three years. Sefton inquired about the truck, and one of the Jorkins remembered he’d noticed a truck track two miles this side of their place. Truck driven off the road and proceeded across country in a north-easterly direction. Young feller thought at the time the driver was on business which was no concern of the Jorkins clan. The imprints of the tyres, according to young Jorkin, were of the same make that Number Four is known to have.”

  “Puzzle pieces falling into place,” Bony said without enthusiasm. “Your information was needed. Please try tracing purchase of additional petrol.”

  “I’ve done that,” Mawby stated in his official manner. “Number Four bought two 40-gallon drums of petrol and a case of eight gallons of engine oil, for which he paid cash. In addition to a filled petrol tank on the morning he left Mindee.”

  “Anything else, Mawby?”

  “Odds and ends. The gent must have prepared for quite a trip. Also paid cash for a quantity of foodstuffs and a chain wire-strainer, plus a five-pound box of plug tobacco. Now what would he want with a wire-strainer?”

  “You tell me,” suggested Bony, and Mawby laughed. “Your reports help a lot, and it’s possible I shall ask you to run out and lend a hand in a few days or a week. I’ll be in a hurry when I do call.”

  “I’ll be ready and waiting, Inspector. I take it you’re running true to form.”

  “You may, Mawby. Au re
voir!”

  Bony sought for Pointer and found him reading a journal on the veranda.

  “What you and I need, Jim, is a short holiday,” he began. “Three or four days, perhaps. You know, duck-shooting and the like. We’d want camp gear and tucker, of course, Could you manage it?”

  Without hesitation, the overseer accepted the ball, and Bony accompanied him to collect shotguns, ammunition and camping equipment.

  2

  Following much showy preparation they drove off on the track to the main homestead, and having proceeded three miles, Pointer was asked to stop the utility, and Bony explained that his objective was as far west even as Jorkin’s Soak, with shooting game as a sideline.

  “I think it unwise to let anyone know what we’re up to,” continued Bony. “From this point, could you make a very wide detour to miss the homestead and reach the road to Blazer’s beyond it?”

  “Yes. But if you want to go over to Jorkin’s Soak we could cross country from here and have no need to go via Blazer’s.”

  “Better still, Jim. We won’t want for water, that’s sure.”

  Water! Water lay everywhere; in pools both great and small; in depressions and ancient sand channels. Fading in memory was that dusty-grey-brown half-dead dehydrated land; a nightmare vision of a strange hell; for here and now was the real world of sparkling waters, and the soft breeze waving the vivid green of grass and herbage. Of animal life there was nothing as yet, and the birds had still to come.

  Pointer had of necessity to detour, to miss sandhills and avoid soft ground. Once they were bogged and lost half an hour. Neither man spoke much, both busy with his own thoughts, Bony of that man who drove his truck off the road near Jorkin’s Soak, and Pointer wondering what this present trip was all about.

  “Almost certain that this creek will stop us,” Pointer predicted. They came to a line of box skirting the creek, and, as the overseer guessed, the creek was running high and fast. “Walton’s Hole is on the other side and lower down. Nothing there but a well and drafting yards belonging to Ballara.”