Jarulan by the River

by Lily Woodhouse

  ‘I’ll call him Boss after his father.’

  ‘No you won’t. It buggers them up. You don’t change their names.’

  The curse words she used. His grandfather must have and she’d learned them off him before she knew English properly. Or was it just that she wanted to shock him, indulge in a level of intimacy he wouldn’t share with any woman? He didn’t like it. The flirting again. The ordering him around. He’d liked her better when they sat in the belvedere, when she was quiet and listening, asking him thoughtful questions about New Zealand, about the work he’d done there, about Eddie. Or had she been getting his measure then, sizing him up, biding her time — till now.

  ‘Changed plenty.’ And he had, horses he’d worked with, horses that had come and gone. Called them all sorts of names — Numbskull, Kaihamuti, Putoko, Lightning. They didn’t mind. Answered to any bloody thing.

  ‘Eh, Boss?’ He patted the mane, leaned forward to blow gently into one ear. ‘Bossy boy, old matie.’

  Rufina made an exasperated little noise — he could only just hear it under the racket of the birds and insects — and rode on ahead of him. Her saddle was the same as his; she’d helped him choose it at the saddlery in Lismore. Identical. She had insisted, even though he’d liked another one better. She hadn’t said why, even though the one he’d liked was cheaper. She had told him, ‘Don’t worry about that. I want you to enjoy yourself a little.’ The saddler’s boy had stared at them, lip curled, silently following them around the shop as if he was worried they were thieves. Outside on the street people ostentatiously got out of their way, crossed the street to avoid coming too close, or slowed their vehicles to get a good look, as if they thought he and Rufina wouldn’t notice. He followed her lead, kept his head up, lengthened his stride. He couldn’t help but be impressed by her mettle. Her bravery. There was something of the warrior about her, inviting him to rest his eyes on her whenever they were alone together.

  He wouldn’t look at how sweetly her slender hips rose above the cantle, how lightly and easily she sat the horse. Boss flicked his ears — the horse didn’t like riding behind the females. Neither did he. It was against the natural order. He let the stallion push past and take the lead.

  There was the view of Jarulan now, the angled roofs and white frames of the belvedere, the outbuildings, the gardens. He was reminded again of what he’d seen at the windows.

  ‘Have we got visitors?’

  Rufina was silent, or perhaps she had answered him and once again he hadn’t heard her. Was he going deaf? This was a country to go deaf in. He glanced back — she had let her horse stop to crop the grass at the side of the road and was digging in her pocket for her cigarettes.

  ‘Rufina, I asked you if — ’

  ‘No we haven’t. And don’t tell me why you asked. I don’t want to know.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘You go on. It’s just up there.’

  He rode on ahead, a sick feeling in his guts. The heat, the screaming of every living thing, her odd behaviour.

  The memorial stood in a shallow bay at the crest. It was more ornate than he had imagined it would be, how he’d seen it from the belvedere and upper windows of the house. There was a little fence; he looped the reins over it and lifted his eyes to the first face of the column.

  Don’t tell me why you’re asking. Is that what she’d said?

  Pidcock, Pidcock, Williams, Smith, Smith, Smith, Smith, Brae. Four Robinsons. All with rank and battalion, mostly the 41st. Brothers and cousins. He’d seen the same at home, names repeated over and over, from big families.

  He read the list to the bottom, the stiff, cold words — but his grandfather would have thought it was dignified, eternal, the names chiselled into the stone. All that loss. There could never be another war like it. He turned away.

  Rufina was only just now coming to the top of the hill, on foot, smoking, leading the horse. She’d taken her time.

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  She went to put her horse in the shade and came back, not meeting his eye, to take Kaiser’s reins. Boss’s reins. He’d done something to offend her. Was it disrespectful to tether Boss to the fence? Was the fence part of the memorial, not just to protect it? It was beginning to rust, black flakes peeling from the waist-high cast-iron rail. One stuck to his hand, like a fish scale. He had the sense of standing on a precipice, with everything he knew to be true and moral sliding violently away from him into a cavernous void, brimming with burning air. He’d ignore her, look at the memorial. That’s what they’d come here to do.

  Pushing his hat down more firmly on his head, he went around to the other side. Uncle Llew. According to his father, the old man’s favourite.

  Pte Llewellyn Mungo Dominic Fenchurch.

  41st Battalion of 11th Infantry Brigade

  Died of wounds. Aged 20

  Fell December 25th 1916

  Western Front, Armentieres, France

  Christmas Day. He read the uncle’s name over and over again, slowly, and felt the tears come, felt them run down his face. At home there were thousands who hadn’t come back, Maori and Pakeha; many he was related to, but none called Fenchurch. He didn’t wonder what had moved him; all he knew was that it felt good to weep. Homesickness, grief, an anxiety centred around this relative by marriage, who was behind him now — directly behind him — and he would turn to face her but she had put her arms around his waist and leaned her cheek against his back. He could feel the brim of her hat between his shoulder blades and dampness. His sweat and hers, mingled. Or tears.

  Was she crying because it was her lot that started it? Because they lost?

  ‘Let me go,’ he said gently, though he had a violent urge to throw her off. She released him but stayed where she was. A moment passed where he was drained of the will to walk away, when the heat of her kept him facing the dead uncle’s stony name and rank. Nearby, a cicada that he knew without looking would be the size of a frog kept up a steady rifle fire into his head. The faces that rose to surround him were not from that, not from the war that everyone tried to forget, but those of his sisters and brothers at home, of the girl who would not marry him, the vicar he’d disappointed by not answering the call, his lost Joe, his poor mother.

  She was touching him again, a fingertip caress to his forearm, and it was enough to move him away towards Boss, who had seen his intention and came towards him amiable as a dog.

  I would have your mood, thought Irving, instead of this tumult.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ Rufina said. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I have to.’ But he stopped, reins in hand and staring at his new boots. Dusty and scraped already. He would go back to the house and take them off, relieve Bill of whatever duties he had and sit together barefoot on the verandah on the south side of Eddie’s wing. In the cool. The relative cool. They could go for a swim in the river.

  The crunch of her boots on dirt and stone, the slip of her hand into his. ‘Look at me.’

  He did, though it cost him. She was hatless, the hot wind stirring her hair, lifting it from her smooth face. He quelled an impulse to push past her and pick her hat up from where it lay in the dirt, put it back on her head. Her face. The golden colour of it. She was summoning courage to back whatever decision she had made. He could see it in her eyes. Resolute, but lacking the nerve.

  ‘Jarulan will be yours. I will make it legal. In your name. You can have Joe, your brothers, whomsoever you like, I think perhaps in a year hence.’

  Hence. She talked an odd mixture of blasphemy and Bible. He nodded. That’s what Eddie wanted. What he wanted.

  ‘But in the meantime, between now and then, you will be my lover.’

  Lover? A laugh broke out of him, startling them both. What did she mean? She wanted him to love her? How? She was his grandfather’s widow. She must mean lover in the European way, lover when no love was certain. Adultery. He shook his head.

  ‘You won’t?’ Her voice had risen and she was blushing, as if
she hadn’t expected him to refuse her. ‘In that case you can leave. Go and find your no-good friends.’

  Fury burst in him to match hers. Her appalling proposal and the insult to his friends. No-good. She had no idea. They were too good, too trusting. He had worried about them every day since they had left. In this country there were dangerous blinkered men, all over this country, men who would hate them on sight. Men who thought killing a coloured man was nothing.

  He climbed onto his horse and rode away, not back to the house but down the other side of the hill to where the path rejoined the river road, breathed deeply of the clean air and put himself together. Tried to.

  After a canter for most of the downhill ride, Boss was happy to walk and they made their way slowly. The great gums along the banks were alive with raucous birds, a rising hot wind stirring the branches. Yellow dirt road. Not red. Didn’t they say the heart of Australia was red? He would like to see it. Up ahead a glistening brown snake lay on a curve in the road, sliding away into the grass as the horse drew closer. It was one of the small surprises of the place, how snakes generally didn’t want to stand and fight. In Sydney he’d watched some wharfies goad one with a stick, a big black bastard that had crawled out of a banana crate. It had done its best to get away from them.

  Empty pasture opened up on his left, rabbits teemed on the side of a hill, a hawk circled against the hot sky. More eagle than hawk. Black and wedge-tailed. Big joker, a bit like the one hanging in Jarulan’s hall. The first time he saw the stuffed one circling him he’d jumped out of his skin and Joe and the others had teased him about it, off and on for days, imitating him and falling about laughing.

  The living giant wheeled away, a small rabbit in its claws. Cwaark cwaark went the birds in the trees. At home there were places where the birds had disappeared completely. Whole species extinct. Here, even though the land had been given the same treatment of clearing and draining and division, it seemed the birds had stayed around. There was a toughness in everything, a kind of resilience that New Zealand didn’t have. Aotearoa was kinder. Much. No snakes. Gentle climate. But the odd thing was that because this place was tougher, you rose to meet it. Didn’t you? He had. He had to work this one out. Toughen up. Or disappear.

  When they reached the place the snake had lain he looked into the grass from the safety of the saddle. No sign of it at all. He felt disappointed, like a kid. Seeing snakes was a pleasure. As wonderful as seeing wallabies and wombats and echidnas and all the creatures. It was the animals here. The wildlife. There was so much of it.

  On the next bend a camp came into view, a piece of canvas stretched between two trees. Two men and a woman sat on wooden chairs unloaded from a cart, which stood piled with a mattress, boxes, a rifle. A baby carriage sat on a wonk on the very top, empty. An old horse had on his nosebag and from a blackened billy on the fire came the smell of rabbit.

  By way of greeting, Irving called out, ‘There’s plenty more of that back there — help yourselves,’ and they stared at him, the woman barely able to lift her head. Perhaps it was weighted by the hat she wore, brimless, close, the kind of hats women wore in the years after the war. It was feathered and flowered, out of keeping with the rest of her shabby clothes. A glimpse of her face showed her thin and badly burned by the sun. Sick, was she? He should ask them to come with him, lead them back to the house and give them food and beds until she got better. The house must be full of beds; there were rooms that he still hadn’t seen. One room that Rufina kept locked at all times, the key in her pocket and no numbered hook for it on the board by the kitchen door.

  ‘Rabbits,’ he said, since the swaggies were looking at him as if he’d spoken in a language they didn’t understand. He pointed back along the road. ‘Not far.’

  The men’s faces were shaded by their hats. One of them nodded and set his chair rocking on the uneven ground.

  ‘Goodbye, then.’ Irving rode on. He wasn’t going to get involved in their suffering, the sick woman, the paltry comforts, the empty baby carriage. Besides, he knew that Rufina didn’t like the swaggies coming in close.

  Dash it. He’d do what he wanted. Jarulan was as good as his. He’d see a way.

  He turned back. The family, or man and wife and friend or brother or whatever they were, were doling out their rabbit stew onto tin plates, eating, but just as desultory as before. Behind them the river ran, sparkling and pooling near the bank, the dense bush on the other side hung with vines. Some washing had been done — a woman’s dress and some smalls spread over the flat rocks at the river’s edge. An attempt at comfort and cleanliness he hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘Gidday again,’ he said. ‘Do you need a bed for the night?’

  The men looked at one another, still chewing. The woman was as unresponsive as she’d been earlier. It occurred to Irving that whatever she had could be catching. Some of the shanty towns were full of sickness. Where had these people come from? There was a camp at Glen Innes, others on the coast. There had been riots, Albert had told him.

  He tried again. ‘It’s not far. Give you a hand with your gear.’

  They still hadn’t replied. Maybe they were deaf. Or ghosts, not real. Another trick of light. The woman looked up, avid suddenly, and Irving could see that she’d come loose. The long road, near starvation, sunburn, whatever tragedy the empty pram signified. Of course she had. She had the look on her face that crazy women get before men fight. Loving it. Wanting it. A strand of dyed red hair came loose from her hat and stuck to her sweaty cheek.

  One of the men, the younger one, put down his quart-pot of tea and got to his feet.

  ‘What sort of bed? Hole in the ground? You’re an Abo, aint ya?’ His face was grizzled, belligerent, less florid than the woman’s. ‘You’re having us on.’ He drew closer.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No you’re not an Abo? Half-caste?’

  ‘Forget it.’ Irving turned Boss’s head to leave.

  ‘Fine nag you’ve got there.’ He made a grab for the bridle but Boss had taken a dislike to him and reared his head away, stamping. Irving felt the man’s eyes on him, take in the saddle, the boots, rise to the hat. The other man had left his seat and behind him the woman was watchful, smiling, her pale lips twisted into an insane looking smirk.

  ‘Ask him where the house is,’ said the second man.

  ‘Forget it,’ muttered Irving, turning his horse to ride off just as an upraised hand at the corner of his vision delivered a sharp slap to Boss’s rump, hard, stinging him into bolting like an agitated colt, his legs all awry, kicking and squirming. Irving held on, just, and heard the laughter behind him. One of them could be retrieving the gun from the cart to fire after him. The woman’s laughter was a bird’s, like the murdered-baby cry of the Australian crow.

  On his third co-ordinated stride the horse leapt into a gallop and headed away from the hill and the river camp, taking the long road around the Fenchurch flats towards the distant Tyrells’ road. For half an hour Irving’s back prickled, wondering if they’d come after him, the pale Abo in stolen clothes on the stolen horse.

  No. This place wasn’t home, never would be. How much did he want the damned farm, or any of it, anyway? He could go back. He could leave tomorrow. This afternoon. Sell the clothes off his back, further down the road sell his lovely Boss. No cash to call his own since she hadn’t put him on the payroll. ‘You’re family,’ she’d said.

  A couple of miles along the level road the horse slowed to a trot, lifting his feet smartly, sweaty and breathing hard. Up ahead was the hairpin bend, narrowed and hummocked with the roots of a giant gum. This was where Aunt Louisa was thrown from a horse and ten years later come to grief with her car, dying slowly six months later. The same tree. A ghost gum, gleaming white, heavy trunk and high boughs.

  High up, a lofty mass of leaves took on the shape of a beseeching child, hands clasped. It gave him a start. He stared; he could make out her wild thick hair, which as he drew closer he could see was represented by a plant th
at had taken root in the crook of a limb. Her bent legs trailed vines like bandages, heavy with white flowers that gave off a strong smell of sugary rot. She was all shifting patterns of wind and leaves and branches, the breeze blowing in again from the coast, melting the illusion away the closer he drew. Stupid. The hairs rose at the back of his neck. Think of something else, of the wind. How he’d never get used to it, how it mostly came from the north here. At home it was the west. That smell from the vines was putrid, made less offensive for the clean sting of the eucalypt. The girl had looked so real he’d thought she was about to call out to him.

  He was light-headed with hunger, that’s what was causing it. Nothing since the doorstep he’d taken with him out to the fence-line. He paused under the tree, dreaming of the kitchen, thinking of how as soon as he got in, he’d go into the kitchen and knock up a batch of scones. They wouldn’t be able to stop him. In fact, they’d be glad, that old auntie and the old man’s by-blow girl, who seemed struck dumb every time he went anywhere near her. He’d get her to give him a hand. Cook the tea, even. Give the old girl a proper rest. Why not?

  Boss didn’t like the corner either, resenting being reined in there, mumbling the bit while Irving gazed up at the tree, so they moved on. Something bad must have happened at that place, or enough people believed that it had, which was the same thing, mostly, he was coming to realise. The tree was more mournful than the memorial, more inhabited — but he had turned his back on all that, years ago, by practising his faith, which had saved him from primitive superstition. That’s what the vicar had told him, the modern Anglican. Forget all that Maori stuff. One Holy Spirit and no other. All you need.

  He had hardly prayed since he’d arrived at Jarulan, though there were times on the journey from New Zealand that he’d prayed more fervently than he’d ever done in his life, every night before sleeping and again on waking, and not for himself, or rarely. More for the strugglers he’d met, the angry men and broken women. The hungry children. The trio at the river had gone bad. Who could blame them?