She snatched her hand away. ‘What if it is so?’ she cried defiantly. ‘What if it is? Can you blame anyone, sitting here night after night alone with only the kids? At least he’s a bit of life about the place. What kind of a life do you think this is for me, left here by myself while you’re away?’
‘That’s true,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s hard enough. If a man takes his wife and kids on the track with ’im, it ain’t no sort of a life for them, and if ’e leaves ’em and goes off to scratch for a crust, it’s no sort of a life either. But it was your choice to stay, Molly.’
‘You could have stayed, too,’ she cried. ‘Freddie, you go out in the yard and play. Don’t stand there.’ She gave the child a push towards the door.
‘I could’ve stayed, too,’ Snow said slowly. ‘Maybe doin’ a bit of wheat-lumpin’ at harvest or bag-sewing at thirty bob a week as a hand-out from your starving cocky relatives. What kind of a life’s that? And the rest of the time just hangin’ about waitin’ for dole-day? I thought maybe I could make a bit of money for you and the kids, and I couldn’t do it here.’ He broke off: ‘What if I do stay home now? What about that? That suit you?’
She was silent, her face averted.
‘Well,’ he said after a few moments, ‘I don’t want to make it harder for you.’ He reached for his hat. ‘Goodbye, Molly.’
‘Snow.’ She was crying now. ‘If you could only have got a steady job and stayed here with me …’
‘There ain’t no jobs.’ His voice was hard. ‘You know there ain’t. What do you think I went away for but to make a bit of money?’
‘Derek’s got a job.’
‘At a pound a week,’ Snow said deliberately. ‘Could I keep a wife and three kids on that?’
‘Aren’t you going to wait for the boys to come home?’ she asked, unwillingly following him to the door.
‘What’s the use?’ He could stay and knock the daylight out of the glib rat who had broken up his home, but what would be the use of that, either? Woman-like, she was delaying him.
‘Where are you going, Snow?’
Snow considered. He put Don into the sulky, the sulky that Molly had not asked him to explain. ‘I might go an’ do a bit o’ fruit-pickin’ later, about the beginning of October. Or I might go through to South Australia. I dunno.’
‘You won’t be … coming back?’ Her face was strained.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry. I won’t bother you. There ain’t room for both of us, an’ I guess it’s ’im you want.’
‘Snow … I …’
He patted her shoulder. ‘All right, Molly; it’s just the way things are. If you or the kids should want me, send word along the track. If I get word, I’ll come.’ He ran his hand over Freddie’s rough, fair thatch, then tossed him in the air. ‘G’bye, son.’
‘G’bye, Dad. Where you going?’ Freddie tagged after him to the gate. ‘Can I come too?’
‘Some other time, son.’ Snow turned deliberately down the road towards the outskirts of the settlement. He said ‘Good-day’ to Aunt Edna, leaning over her gate, but he did not stop. He nodded to a couple of men he knew. It was as though he was seeing this dusty place for the first time. It had become suddenly, startlingly vivid. The old horse with its head drooped away from the wind outside the little hotel, the front gardens of the few dilapidated weatherboard shacks that made up the main street. The old faded sign ‘Baker’ over a little shop with broken windows and a gaping door. These old shanties of mud and weatherboard seemed somehow more permanent than a great city. Their dirt and nakedness had an enduring quality that he had never noticed until now. It was as though he walked out of the strong fortress of the Hourigans, the men who clung to their patch of earth if they had to scratch it with their finger-nails for tools. Between him and the men who had land — any piece of land — there was no longer a tie. He had not even a back paddock into which to turn his horse. He had no home, no family any more.
‘Dad! Wait on, Dad. Hey!’
His two elder boys were racing towards him across a paddock. Jimmy was limping a little, with his foot tied up in a piece of rag, so that Brian, the younger of the two, freckled, with the light-blue eyes of Snow and the sharp chin of Molly, reached the sulky first. Jimmy was ginger and freckled, but quieter and even sharper than Brian. They both of them had the angular, ugly build common to growing boys and stray cats.
‘You going again, Dad?’ Brian asked.
‘Yeah. I been home.’ Snow’s mouth twisted harshly with a pain he had not known he could feel. He had not considered his sons when he parted so finally from Molly. He had just taken it for granted that they would stay and ask no questions. But they knew everything. That was the worst of shrewd small boys. They were good kids, too, handy with horses and tools, although he had never worked them the way their grandfather had worked him when he was young. He eyed them affectionately.
‘We’re coming, too.’ Jimmy hopped up into the sulky. ‘As long as Mum’s got Freddie, she don’t care.’
‘No, son,’ Snow said grimly.
‘Well, you said one of us could come next trip, didn’t he, Brian?’
‘It’s a fact.’ Brian nodded his head in Snow’s own way.
‘Well.’ For a moment Snow hesitated. After all, why shouldn’t he have one of his boys with him? Split fair, Molly, he argued in his mind. You’ve got the thick end of the stick with Derek and Freddie and the house. Why shouldn’t I have one of these? Then he nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ He drew a penny from his pocket. ‘Loser stays. What’s it to be?’
‘Tails,’ Jimmy called. The coin flashed, then rang against the road.
‘It’s tails,’ Jimmy shouted, hopping in the road. His brother stood looking up at Snow disconsolately. ‘You won’t not come back, Dad?’ he asked.
‘Dunno what me plans are, son.’
‘Write me a letter.’
‘Yeah.’ Snow turned to Jimmy. ‘Nick off home and get your things. Tell mother I said you was to come with me. I’ll pick you up in about half an hour. I’ve got some mates of mine camped down the road.’ He clucked to Don. ‘Right-o, you be ready.’
He did not want to hurry. Perhaps Molly would send some kind of envoy if she knew he was waiting down by the creek. She would have a chance to think things over and realise she was acting badly. The boys had re-knit that tie to his home that a few minutes before he felt he had severed for ever. He still felt as though he had swallowed a large stone and it had lodged at the base of his throat, but it was a smaller stone, with fewer sharp edges.
Snow’s three companions were waiting for him, polite and anticipatory; but at his first remark, ‘We’re going on,’ their expectation became an anxious bewilderment.
‘We’re going on,’ Snow repeated heavily. ‘Better get the Hore in the van. Save unharnessing Don. He could do with a spell in the sulky for a change.’
The busker was the first to recover. ‘Nothing up at home, Snow?’
‘A bit of trouble.’ Snow’s voice was just as usual. ‘Better fill up the water-bag, Stray.’
‘Where we goin’?’ Dancy queried.
‘To hell if you like.’ The savagery that Snow put into his reply stifled all further enquiry, except that the busker, tightening Horehound’s girth-strap, said almost diffidently: ‘Snow, I don’t want to push my nose in your business, but … is there anything a bloke could do?’
Snow shook his head. ‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘It ain’t no good arguin’ with women.’
He was glad now to have this crew with him. At most times they might be as comfortable as a set of boils, but now they were a help. The way they had taken his announcement, almost in silence, not even Phippsy enquiring or wanting to discuss it, had given him a better opinion of his followers.
He had still to go through the town with them. They could not very well turn round and go back the way they had come, nor would Snow skirt round Blimdagery. Straight up the main street and stop in front of the gate of his house: that was the w
ay. Why should Molly be allowed to think that she was casting her husband out like a stray dog? The frozen glare of Aunt Edna and a group of female relations as Snow’s party went slowly past made him feel that the Hourigans knew all there was to know of the situation in the Grimshaw home. Their sympathies had never been with him. All Hourigans stuck together like burrs to a sheep’s wool. As he drew the van up in front of his house, Snow recognised Shamus Hourigan, middle-aged, mild, with a drooping grey moustache, and his son George waiting for him on the verandah.
‘G’day,’ he said, as they came forward to the side of the van. ‘Come inside if you want to say anything.’ He threw the reins to the interested Miss Phipps.
‘But, Theo, it isn’t possible to take Jimmy,’ Uncle Shamus was protesting. ‘Isn’t the boy’s schoolin’ to be considered?’
‘I tell you, if you want to talk, get inside.’
The front door opened to show a white-faced Molly hostile and resolute. Then it closed with a slam. The busker whistled softly to himself.
‘So that’s his wife,’ he remarked to the Stray. ‘I bet she’d snap the nose off your face.’
When Snow came out, Jimmy was not with him. ‘The kid’s not comin’,’ he said shortly by way of explanation. ‘Come on.’
He drove through Blimdagery as though it did not exist.
Five miles farther they stopped at a reserve close to the big town to which Blimdagery was as a satellite to a great planet. Snow went off to ‘see a chap,’ carrying a set of spare harness thoughtfully over his arm. Early next morning the busker initiated a search; he found Snow lying on the cold concrete of the yard of the Exchange Hotel. Someone had thoughtfully thrown a bucket of water over him the night before to bring him to after a fight. Lying out in the cold had not improved Snow any more than the fight had improved him, or the drink he had put away. Someone had been through his pockets for the money remaining from the sale of the harness; and, as the busker helped Snow back to camp, he cursed himself for letting his mate go into town alone. All Snow could talk about was the necessity of getting away, as far away from Blimdagery as possible.
6
I
Dole-day was four days ahead, but Snow, with a bull-necked and exasperating obstinacy, insisted that they turn south to Logan, and between themselves and Logan lay sixty-seven miles of plains. That meant the horses must do over twenty miles a day. If Snow wanted to go on, Duke was pleased, because he had seen before him a dreadful vision of Snow fighting drunk or in gaol or selling off their conveyance piecemeal, and on Duke would fall the onus of stopping him and chivvying him and persuading him. Duke hated responsibility. All his reckless life he had dodged planning or organising or taking up burdens. Let others do the worrying. Not for him!
But, as though Snow’s conduct in selling the harness and getting drunk and insisting on going on were not enough, he crowned it all by going down with influenza. Snow looked like a man impervious to anything except a dum-dum bullet, but now, perversely, he showed every sign of dying. His lips puffed up, burst and bled, he could hardly see out of his reddened eyes, from which agonising hot tears ran down his face. With his teeth chattering in a fever, he still insisted on driving. No woman was going to drive his horse, he swore. That was what was wrong with the Horehound; a woman must have owned her. But his voice was only a croaking whisper, and presently, when the pain in his back became unbearable and his breath sawed his chest as though every gasp had a knife in it, he collapsed and was laid in the van, still swearing that if they gave him a few minutes he would be right again.
‘You lie there,’ the busker soothed him, ‘or I’ll knock you down. The Stray can drive Horehound.’
‘I will not,’ the Stray shrilled fearfully. ‘I ain’t goin’ to be killed by no damn jib.’ She regarded the sulky with terror. She had never in her life driven a horse, ananimal to her as monstrous as a mastodon.
‘Well, Phippsy, it’s up to you.’
Miss Phipps regarded the busker blandly. ‘I wouldn’t even ride in the sulky while that beast is pulling it,’ she declared self-righteously. ‘And if we were not in this uninhabited place, I would leave you to your own devices. I shall ride in the van with you and Mr Snow.’
‘You will not. You’ll ride in the sulky or you’ll walk. Snow and I and the gear are plenty for Don to pull.’
‘In that case,’ Miss Phipps said determinedly, ‘I shall walk.’
‘You can go to the devil,’ the busker declared hotly. He turned again to the Stray. ‘Dancy …’
‘I’m scared, I tell you.’
‘Dancy, do you want Snow to die? Do you want us to miss our dole? We can’t just leave the sulky here. And if I don’t drive Don, Snow will insist on driving him himself.’
The busker knew from experience that Horehound was a devil of a horse, with a hard mouth, a cunning delight in making things awkward for her driver; but if he had learnt to manage Horehound, the Stray could also learn. Then, again, Horehound had taken a fancy to Don; she would follow behind him, but she refused to go in front. That was as well, because the busker could keep an eye on the outfit.
‘You don’t want Snow to die, do you?’ he pleaded. ‘We’ve got to do fifty-five miles by Thursday, and he can’t drive. You don’t want …’
‘Oh, shut up,’ the Stray said savagely. ‘I’ll drive the damn horse.’
White to the lips, she climbed up into the sulky; and the Horehound, sensing from the Stray’s grip on the reins that she had something small and weak to deal with, commenced to jerk and fidget and sidle. The busker was nearly as scared of the Horehound as the Stray was. He had always depended on Snow to manage the horses, but now, with the leader of the expedition breathing heavily under the ’possum-skin rug in the van, he felt himself to be in sole charge. He gave the Stray a grin of encouragement.
‘You’ll be all right, kid,’ he said firmly. ‘Horehound’ll just follow old Don. Keep a tight grip on her and look out for cars. With a mile of plain on either side, they’d still sooner run right over you.’
The Stray nodded her head humbly. She tried to return the smile, but her face was too stiff with fear. ‘ ’Strufe!’ she whispered. ‘Look after poor Snowy.’ She felt it might be her last request. Ever since Snow had come back to the camp outside Blimdagery and said they were going on ‘To hell if you like’ she had been afraid to ask what had happened to him at home. It was all her fault. Snow’s wife had found out he was travelling with women and had thrown Snow out. And now he was sick. The Stray had been rehearsing all the things she would have said to Molly. She now began to repeat them aloud for the busker’s benefit. ‘I wouldn’t have frowed ’im out,’ she began.
‘Come on. Let’s get going,’ the busker said sharply. He clucked to Don, and they started off, the van in the lead, then the sulky, with Miss Phipps straggling along behind. That nightmare drive was something both the Stray and the busker would never forget. They were going through open country where the road ceased to be anything except individual car- and sulky-tracks over the sandy surface of the plain. Whichever way they turned the wind seemed to come head on like a charging elephant, and against this wind the horses laboured, against the driving grit, the savage, steady rubbing on the nerves, against the cold brutality of the empty plains, under the empty skies.
They had run out of tobacco. They had only bread and jam and tea. The Stray managed to beg some eggs at a farm-house, but they did not dare to stop. They would miss their dole; and if they did that, what would become of them? The eggs were fried up and given to Snow, who left them untouched. He would drink only a little cold tea, and this was as well, for they had nothing else to give him.
For Phippsy it was a horrible time. She walked. Cars whirled past them occasionally; but Miss Phipps, had she been offered a lift, would have refused to travel unchaperoned in a car. So she walked.
The busker had no time to worry about Miss Phipps. She was just a dead weight. He had to unharness the horses, get water, put up the tent, prepare the mea
ls, wait on Snow, find wood in this unwooded region sufficient to keep them from freezing before morning.
The Stray, her efficiency increasing daily, was a help; but the full weight of decision fell on Duke. There was, fortunately, sufficient feed for the horses; and they met some drovers coming through with sheep who reported that rain had fallen on the track ahead of them.
Thursday saw them camped in a sheltered hollow a mile from the town of Logan, with their troubles and the plain behind them. They got their dole without argument and then settled down to tend Snow. Calling a doctor was out of the question. It was only a bad attack of influenza. They had all had it, and knew it would disappear in a week or so, leaving a racking cough for the rest of the winter. But dole food is neither nourishing nor sufficient, even for people in full health. Snow must have better. Duke and the Stray fell upon the town of Logan and pillaged it. Never before had the Stray lied with such moving fervour of her three starving children. Had she said there was a sick man back at the camp it would not have brought them much. The busker actually told the publican at the Rose and Crown the true story. He pleaded to be given some firewood to chop in return for a double dose of overproof rum.
‘My mate’s got the flu bad,’ he said. ‘He’s spitting blood.’
‘You’re right, son.’ The publican nodded sympathetically. He was a fat, bald-headed man who sampled his own wares. ‘There’s only one thing any good. Give it to him boiling hot with a bit of sugar and water and a lemon.’ He measured out the rum. ‘There you are. Remember, it’s got to be hot.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare lemon,’ the busker hinted. He got his lemon and departed in triumph.
Snow was lying by the fire. Miss Phipps, who had just made herself some tea, ‘had not thought,’ she said, ‘to give Mr Snow any.’ She was deeply excited and muttering to herself as she scribbled with a stub of pencil on a bit of paper.
The Battlers Page 8
