He was beside the Namoi, red as cayenne pepper, with steep, treacherous, clay banks, red-hot as a river that flowed from Hell. There was no shade, and he lay in a bed of nettles tangled in rusty barbed wire, and the sun glared down at him, and he was bitten by red-hot ants.
People came to laugh at him. Molly was there and the boys; even Jimmy did not care. Everywhere were people, cruel, hard, hot as clay, watching him pitilessly. A nurse, with the cynical autocracy of nurses, asked him if he felt better, and then, in the same breath, told him not to speak. The doctor came, inspected him with satisfaction, and informed the nurse that an inch higher and he would have lost his eye.
Snow went to sleep again. He was not interested. He was watching a map of Australia, the kind of map they had hanging on the wall at school, that looked like some great sluggish beast, with the mountain backbone running down the coast, and ranges of ribs running off; a sprawling shape, it seemed, something like a sheep with green wool, folded into the wrinkled skin of the ranges. There were running red sores of towns and inflamed patches, spreading out in scars and scurf through the green wool. There were tiny, dark creatures, crawling and repulsive, swarming all over the hide. If only the animal had put up a fight!
‘No resistance,’ he heard the doctor’s voice say. ‘Don’t talk to me about these great hulks. They go down to it. Then again, underfeeding …’
The chattering of visitors to the man in the next bed awakened him. He lay there, very weak and tired, but able to talk when the Apostle was ushered into the grey and white ward, with its rows of beds in an ordered hush, and its faint smell of sick men overpowered by the strong odour of anaesthetic. The Stray had been refused admittance the night before, but the Reverend Mr Postlewaite, with his worn best suit, his accent, and his courteous timidity, had not so much impressed the nurses as made them feel sorry for him.
He edged into a chair by Snow’s bedside, and without any preliminaries, drew forth a small prayer-book and began licking the leaves, meditatively searching for the prayers for the Visitation of the Sick. The Apostle never waited to be asked to pray. He would have waited a long time. He just launched out, and it was no use shouting in his ear or plucking his sleeve. He prayed obstinately, in a rapid, monotonous mumble, rubbing his head every now and then, his eyes tight shut.
Snow and the Apostle were old acquaintances. They had once spent a long afternoon on the banks of the Darling, discussing the interesting problem of whether fish think, and what kinds of bait were best. So he waited until the Apostle had finished his mumbling; then he croaked:
‘Lo, Harry. How’s the wife and kids?’
‘Fine.’ The Apostle rubbed his head again dubiously. ‘Mrs … er … Dancy … sent her love.’
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes. Quite.’ The Apostle had been warned not to worry Snow with any news, even such joyful and heart-warming things as Thirty-Bob selling the Horehound, and the farmer returning her the same afternoon with a demand for his money back. Thirty-Bob refused to return the money. ‘I sold her to you, sport. Ain’t that right? Well, now, you try and sell her to me.’ In the end Thirty-Bob had bought the Horehound back for considerably less than the farmer paid, and was joyfully preparing to try the trick again.
‘Good.’ Snow’s eyes strayed to a ragged bunch of roses and bamboo sprouts. ‘Who put them weeds there?’
‘It’s Dancy,’ the Apostle said apologetically. ‘She brings flowers every night she can.’
‘Oh,’ Snow was silent again. ‘Everything fine, eh?’
‘Yes, yes.’ The conversation looked like fading away. The Apostle edged closer to Snow. ‘You nearly got away,’ he said, shaking his head seriously. ‘But you couldn’t, of course. No man can escape his life before he is allowed to go.’
Snow stared at him silently. He had heard of the Apostle’s queer ways, but he had never met him in this mood.
‘I know how it is,’ the Apostle went on. ‘Everything conspires against you. You can’t even die.’ As he rubbed his head excitedly, the coat sleeve fell away from his bony wrist. ‘Disease and evil are only humanity swimming against the current of the Blood.’
Snow broke in suddenly: ‘Harry!’
The Apostle’s eyes lost their glitter. ‘Yes, Snow?’
‘How much does it cost to get a divorce? A real good one that gives you the kids.’
The Apostle became almost practical. ‘I am no lawyer,’ he said. ‘But I think it could be done for twenty pounds. I’ll find out for you if you like.’
‘And you’d better find out how a chap stands, travellin’ the way I do. Would I have to settle down to get it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’d be willing to pay extra, mind, to get young Jimmy. I’d like the other kids, but I want young Jimmy, if I don’t get nothin’ else.’
The Apostle was his reasonable self, interested, trying to be helpful. ‘If it isn’t too much strain on you, Snow, perhaps you could tell me the position. I’ll write to a lawyer I know, but he’d want a lot of information.’
Snow, in a whisper, told him all about the homecoming to Molly; and the Apostle wrote it down in his black notebook. ‘I’ll send a letter,’ he said briskly.
‘Thanks, Harry. Much obliged.’
‘You’ll have to go now.’ The nurse came bustling up to the bed ostentatiously. ‘I told you not to talk.’
‘Twenty pounds, eh?’
‘I’m sure that would be plenty.’
‘Harry.’ The Apostle had turned to go. ‘Any shearin’ yet?’
‘They’ve started out at a place on the Crumwell Road.’
Snow turned over on his side wearily. ‘Well, if I don’t get no shearin’, I’ve a scheme up me sleeve that ought to bring in a bit of dough.’ He was careful not to explain to the Apostle that it was cyaniding opossums he had in mind. The Apostle was hardly likely to look favourably on the slaughter of opossums. He refused to drive a horse, though it was cheaper than the truck, because he hated to think the horse was pulling while he rode. ‘I’ll fix ’er.’ Snow’s thoughts reverted to his wife. ‘I’ll teach her to call in her flamin’ relatives.’
The Apostle said quietly: ‘What about Dancy?’
‘Well, what about her?’ Snow’s tone was sullen. ‘She can look after herself, can’t she? I’m just goin’ on without her, that’s all.’
‘You can’t do it?’
‘Oh! can’t I?’ Snow was roused. He tried to sit up, but dropped back weakly. ‘You’d be surprised. You just watch me.’
‘I say you can’t do it,’ the Apostle repeated. ‘She has a claim on you …’
‘Not a one.’
‘A claim, I say. If you’d give her a chance …’
‘You give me a chance. I’ve got enough worries.’
‘You may leave her behind, but you’d always be sorry. She has a great loyalty to you, a generous, brave spirit. I tell you’ — the Apostle bent his brows at Snow — ‘these things constitute a claim. However much you try to leave her, you never will.’
Snow held his peace. He could see the nurse coming to eject the Apostle.
‘You wouldn’t believe,’ he said later to the man in the next bed, ‘that that cove’s loony, would you?’
‘Why don’t they lock him up?’
‘Search me.’
‘Influence, that’s what it is,’ the other man asserted. ‘There was poor old Jack Riley used to camp year after year at the ’sylum gates, so that when his son come out at week-ends he’d be able to see him and have him at the camp. It beats me,’ he added, ‘how many loony chaps there are about. Though you could hardly pick that chap what came to see you. You sure he’s mad?’
‘Mad as a snake,’ Snow asserted.
II
Two days later came Dancy. She had to show a great deal of determination to wrest her afternoon off from the clutch of Mrs Marks, and was not in any mood to keep Snow from hearing the news. She had a long tale of woe to tell, the burden of her lament
being that ‘them bloody Markses was workin’ her poor’; and she would be thankful when Snow came out of hospital and they moved on. She had learned how to make jug-covers, and this would help out between dole-days.
Snow said nothing. Now that the busker and Phippsy had gone, he saw no reason why he should still be saddled with the Stray. Where she got the idea that she was going to travel with him, he did not know. Not if he could help it! He had had enough of women for keeps. Snow’s lazy nature was turning hard. The scar on his face might be healing; his coughing and gasping bronchitis were over; but his mental turmoil was cooling into a firm determination to keep clear of women.
‘What kind is this Mrs Marks?’
‘Ain’t I just told yer? She’s like a yard of pump-water, straight up and down, wiv ’er ’air skimped back, and an eye like a dead fish. And mean! She’d skin a flea for the hide and taller.’
‘How much’s she payin’ you, Stray?’
The Stray hesitated. She had boasted so loudly to the other campers. ‘Twenty-five bob,’ she replied.
‘Well, that’s not good, but it’s not too bad.’ If the woman was sweating the Stray, it was her look-out. Snow might not have left the Stray behind if she had no job; but now that she had, it was very opportune. All he wanted was to get out of this hospital as quickly as possible and be on his way looking for work for himself. The idea of work obsessed him. He must make some money, and make it quickly, so that he could get his divorce and get Jimmy.
‘Thirty-Bob got slung in for drunk and resistin’ arrest,’ Dancy was saying. ‘He and Dick Tyrell both. And Sam Little got slung in the same night, and they fought all over the bloody p’lice-station. Mrs Tyrell had the bloody baby just as they got to Gargendra, and Deafy’s waiting wiv ’er there. The bloody ’Postle’s fick as fieves wiv all them Littles. ’E sits and yarns to ’em all the bloody day. Burning Angus and his mob are shearin’ out towards Crumwell in a bloody cocky shed.’ She sat there, innocently pleased with herself and the news she had garnered, and let the adjectives drip. It was a pleasant relief after keeping guard on her tongue so long. Suddenly she asked: ‘Hey, mister, how’s the bloody time?’ And the man in the next bed, who had a watch, told her. ‘Christ! I got to walk all the damn way back, an’ I won’t get there till tea-time. Oh, well! To hell wiv ’er! ’Twon’t be long now, will it, Snow? We’ll get Thirty-Bob and Dick out of quod and all have a big booze-up to celebrate.’ She gave Snow’s arm a squeeze as she rose to go. ‘Hooray for now, Snow.’
‘Hooray,’ Snow responded rather sullenly, as the Stray swaggered off down the ward, limping a little in her old, broken shoes.
‘Gawd! she’s a trimmer,’ the man in the next bed commented with a chuckle.
Snow did not want to talk about the Stray. He wanted to dismiss her altogether from his mind. She belonged to the city, to a kind of life that was nothing to him. All he wanted was to get well.
But as he began to get better, his head cleared, and he felt only an immense weakness and weariness. Why worry? He might just as well lie there without thinking. Whenever he thought, it hurt him. His mind turned to Molly and the boys. Why had he walked away and left her in possession of the boys? He was too weak to fight. He only wanted to get away. To keep on wandering on, finding new camps, and meeting old mates, and never staying in the one place. That was because he had been on the track until it got into his blood. The travellers had a saying: ‘Once you get on the track, you’re on it for life.’ They said that a bagman never settled down. He might stay in the same town for years; but he would get up again, even when he was old, and go on a ‘walk-about’ like a black-fellow.
It was funny, Snow reflected, how the travellers were getting to be like the blacks. They might pretend to despise them and look down upon them; but the travellers were just as much a separate race, distinct from the people who lived in towns, as the blacks were. The white ‘dole-chasers’ went about in families and little tribes, with a language of their own, a code of their own that forbade their refusing food or shelter to any like themselves. The women worked and sold things in towns, but the men hunted, or tended horses, and sat in the shade. Mostly the men danced and the women looked on. They had councils to decide which way they would go, and though everyone had a voice, the eldest carried most weight. They were a new sort of people, the travellers; and he belonged to them. He did not belong to the Hourigans, who scratched a little plot of land, to the ‘cockies,’ anxious and hardworking and greedy. He was a ‘battler.’
All along the coast, sheltered to the west by the high wall of the mountains and to the east by the sea, the cities lay; where people could live in flats and have central heating and air-conditioned houses and refrigerators; and forget about the barrens and the barbed wire over the ranges. They could talk tariffs and exchange rates and stock-market quotations. Maybe, if they went on talking war and business long enough, something in the way of an apocalypse would come of it; they would be strangled, swallowing their own tongues. A faint disgust took Snow as he thought of streets of concrete and asphalt, and roaring trams, and people jammed together as though they were gummed to a fly-paper. White ants, crawling, shapeless jellies in dark, underground tunnels and cells. No more bones, no more stamina than white ants. Maybe, if they kept squealing in the cities long enough, there would presently be just a whiff of poison gas blowing over the tall human ant-heaps; and a deadly silence and grass in the streets.
But there would always be battlers. The blacks had been driven away from the coast; killed, shot, poisoned like wild beasts; mowed down in thousands; but they were hanging on. If another sort of people than the white — say, yellow people — landed on the coasts and mopped up the jelly-livers in the cities, they would still have a job on their hands cleaning out the battlers; men and women who could face a desert and live off the country, travelling in small mobs not enough to drink the hidden wells dry. Any invader would have a hard time with the real Australians, who were so dark brown they might as well be black, and so tough they might as well be leather — people who were like the shadows of a cloud going over the fields. They would hold out, as the blacks still held out in the deserts and barrens. Being without water frightened people; they stayed near the rivers and along the sea-coast. But out west there was dry country, thirsty, hard and hot. Even after the city-people had been poisoned off or bombed out, the travellers would be going from one camp to the next, slowly travelling round their territory as the seasons changed; hunting, fishing, dancing, quarrelling, making love. This wasn’t really a tame country. It never would be unless the city politicians spent some money building dams; and they were not likely to do that while they could build an aeroplane factory instead.
To hell with the lot of them! The trackmen were the real people. He didn’t want, Snow decided, to live in a place like Blimdagery. He didn’t want to live in a city as Dancy had done. He would always go on and on, to the end of his life, travelling about and following the sun north or south. Funny how a country shaped people to its ideas more than they shaped the country. The blacks had always travelled about; and now the whites did the same. You saw it even in the city people. They were restless at the change of the year, and invented excuses, even if it was only the Melbourne Cup, to trek south. In winter they went on a walk-about north to Queensland along the Barrier Reef. They didn’t settle. They wandered round. And the travellers wandered most of all, because they were closest to what the country was thinking.
Now that he was getting better, Snow had a mad craving to get out in the open; but the nurse refused to give him his clothes. He got very angry about it. Despite the fact that he collapsed twice, he insisted on stalking round the hospital in his pyjamas, and gave a lot of trouble, and would not be persuaded back to bed.
After three days of this he became so threatening, that he was given his clothes, and as soon as he had them, he walked straight out of the hospital and down the town, staggering a little, and resting now and then, but fiercely determined to go out and get a p
en at one of the shearing-sheds.
16
On that beautiful spring morning which saw Snow, like some weak creature new emerged from a chrysalis, crawl into the sunshine and sit trembling for a while, as though to harden his body and strengthen it for the ordeal of facing life once more, the Apostle, back in his old camp by the river, was enjoying a quince with a hornet.
It was a big, yellow, juicy quince, which one of the Chinamen had given him, for he was a great favourite with the Chinese gardeners. He would take a bite and hold out the quince, and the hornet, which had been circling and waiting for its turn, would land on the quince, and very delicately, nervously, put down its proboscis and sip the juice. Then the Apostle would take another bite, and the hornet would circle round and wait its turn again. As the last morsel vanished, the Apostle wasting not even the seeds, which he bit with great satisfaction, the hornet made a landing on a corner of the man’s mouth and began to clean up a trickle of juice which was running down his chin. The Apostle waited politely until the insect had given a satisfied buzz and departed, before he rose from the log on which he was sitting and prepared to go up to the hospital to see Snow.
He had been thinking about Snow, weaving him into the pattern of his thoughts as a recurring thread that jerked in and out uneasily through all other preoccupations. Snow had wanted to die; and the only thing that had held him was his fierce determination, his hate and anger. He wanted to hurt his wife. He wanted to take his son from his wife, not from any affection as much as for revenge. Every affection in Snow seemed to have withered and hardened.
The Battlers Page 22
