A Woman of the Inner Sea

by Thomas Keneally

  —I was getting to your son. Best bloody thing you ever had anything to do with. Though if you ask me, it was the shearer’s cook. Kate, this is Guthega’s son Noel.

  The tall boy, so much lankier than his father, put his hand out for Kate to shake. Guthega didn’t like that.

  —Don’t shake hands with a woman, bugger it Noel! Jesus, she’s not some bloody feminist on the High Court of Australia or something!

  So everyone laughed at the boy, who was genuinely uneasy. Though Kate kept a smile to herself, it was more because she had found a town where people still called their children Noel. Again, this seemed as wonderful as she could expect. A return to simple elements.

  Jelly had to tell her something as soon as he could manage to swallow his merely dutiful laughter. She could see by the way his hands chopped at the surface of the bar.

  —Noel is the Australian champion shearer. You wouldn’t believe it. But honestly. Australian champion. With a father like that. Bloody dyslexic, hopeless father. So, you could of shook the hand of an Aussie champ.

  Noel shifted from foot to foot. It was appropriate for Noel’s type that they be discomfited while people chatted about their glory.

  —Wide comb, miss, said Noel. Not narrow comb, like in the old days.

  —Wide comb, Guthega repeated. Not like the old days. Bloody scabby wide comb shears the bloody graziers forced on us. And now here’s my son the champion of the wide bloody comb. His mother and I can’t hold our heads up.

  Guthega had drunk too much. His son, the wide comb champion, hadn’t. Kate could hear Mrs. Guthega’s absent voice.

  —You stick with your father and get him home okay!

  Jack next told her the names of the two old men, the Cornerman and the Plaqueman. The one in the corner took it eagerly. The other with a small, contemptuous rearing of the head. He and Kate understood they had no need of each other’s names. A woman who had lost hold of both her children wasn’t going to hold on to two names like that.

  But the Cornerman didn’t know it. Without reason, he expected immediate friendship and banter. He would say, Kate! And expect to hear his name spoken in return. Like the kangaroo in Volume 13, just because he had had a convivial mother, he still believed, in his antique folly, that the world would come his way.

  The man in the overalls had already left by now.

  Since there was nothing more to be learned, Kate said good night in a general sort of way. She was aware that Jelly’s eyes followed her in exactly the right manner: lustrous with goodwill. But not expecting anything.

  Stupid Guthega though, the champ’s father, thought he had a chance.

  Twelve

  FOR A TIME, she could tell, she made a little difference to business. Teachers from the Captain John Eglington High School and accountants from the banks: National, Westpac, State, came in to see her for novelty’s sake. The Escapees asked her to a Wednesday night party at a pub further up the Eglington Highway. They could not understand that she did not need another pub, except to get away from them. Apart from them, the Railway was the idea she had been in search of.

  A few attempted seductions but were easily rebuffed: a motor mechanic asked her would she like to drive out to Wrangle Reserve with him after closing, just to see the billabongs under the moon. It was lovely out there, he told her. A bookkeeper at the stock and station agent’s wondered would she like to go and see the French play Australia at Wagga.

  —A long drive and it’ll be bloody cold, he told her as if this added allurement.

  At last, muttering about her frigidity, the unusual welter of business died away.

  In the mornings she ate bacon, not bothering to separate the fat from the ocher kernels of meat. She had steak at lunch and tea time. With it she consumed slices of white bread laden with packs of cold butter. Woman of starch: woman of milk!

  Jack took her room and board out of her modest weekly wage. It cost ninety dollars a week to stay at Murchison’s Railway Hotel and transmogrify yourself.

  Yet the transformation did not always go smoothly. One morning, coming out into the brisk air which lay over inner Australia on such late autumn mornings, she heard through the kitchen window Jack and Connie debating her.

  —I’m talking about ordinary friendliness.

  —Bugger me, Connie, you were the one worried she was a tart!

  —You don’t have to be a tart to be a bit more friendly. She’s scaring people off.

  —That was all fake anyhow, love, all that extra business.

  She could hear Jack making little squeaks of reason, of appeals for concession, with the corner of his mouth.

  —Those blokes wouldn’t have lasted as customers, he said. Artificial.

  —Didn’t look too damn artificial on the bank statements, said Connie, the frugal Greek. For who knew when the Turks would come and burn the village? Make business while you can.

  —Listen darls, don’t say anything for Christ’s sake.

  —She’s weird.

  —Yeah, but she’s not dangerous is she?

  Later in the kitchen, she peeled the potatoes which hefty Shirley would fry for dinner, and she let her eyes skid across the pages of newspapers. Sometimes her attention would hook on some little snag, a familiar name or an intimately known one.

  Kozinskis Given Stay

  On Building Commission

  Mr. German Q.C., representing development tycoons Peter and Paul Kozinski, the father-and-son team of Kozinski Constructions and Kozinski International Development Corporation, were given temporary exemption from appearing before the Inquiry into the Building Industry led by Mr. Commissioner P. Roger Q.C. Mr. Roger accepted Mr. German’s submission that in view of recent family tragedy, the Kozinskis had not been able to collect their thoughts for their appearance before the Commission. Mr. Roger said that although there were questions he wished to put to the Kozinskis, and though these could not be indefinitely delayed, their recent tragedy was such as would justify the sympathy of the entire community. The Commissioner was referring to events at …

  But she did not let her eye rest long enough to encounter a cheap retelling of her own tale.

  As she worked in the kitchen, scaling the bland vegetables over the generally bland newsprint, Connie set her a test.

  —Jack and I are set to go to the Hereford Breeders’ ball. We were wondering whether you could baby-sit the kids?

  Kate closed her eyes. She didn’t want these unnecessary tricks played on her.

  —I’m not good at looking after children.

  —D’you mean you’ll look after them on protest? Or you don’t want to look after them at all.

  —No. I’m not good …

  She was prepared to share the Railway Hotel with Connie’s children, but she did not talk to them and avoided remembering their names. They were there, like the Cornerman and the Plaqueman in the bar.

  Knowing that what she’d said to Connie had endangered her, she went to find Jack in the darkened public bar, not yet open for business.

  —Listen, Jack. I’ll do this whole shift.

  He didn’t know what she meant. He frowned earnestly.

  —I mean, ten in the morning until closing. The whole day.

  —You’ll be buggered, love.

  —I want to do some hard work. I’ll sleep better.

  —I don’t know if I can afford you.

  —Same pay. Same pay.

  She wanted to fill the deserts of daytime with that simple wristwork. The two-pour schooner. Flick. Flick. Perfection.

  —Listen … none of my business. But do you reckon you’re okay? Do you reckon you ought to see a doctor?

  —I saw plenty when I was in hospital.

  —Hospital?

  —For my burns. Do you think I might be a danger to people?

  —No, not that. No fear.

  And Jack made the appeasing noises which he’d used earlier with Connie. The little squeaks of rational dialogue.

  But Kate could see at once tha
t it was not quite enough to be willing to pull perfect beers for twelve hours at a stretch. Or thirteen. As always, people weren’t satisfied that you did what they did. They wanted to see the wires and the struts.

  It was getting complex. So she decided to be forceful.

  —Look, do you want me to bloody well work here or not, Jack?

  He was not good at the anger of women. He was frightened by it.

  —Okay, okay. I think you’re great at this, Kate.

  He tapped one of the beer taps, the Toohey’s New.

  —Do you have a husband somewhere or something?

  —I left him.

  She wondered was there somewhere she could go where men, and the question of men, were not as omnipresent and would not so clearly arise. She could not think however of such a location.

  —Okay, Kate. Try it if you want. What about from one o’clock in the afternoon till eleven at night? You’ve got to have a life to yourself, Kate.

  He seemed to understand that this easy You’ve got to have a life enraged her, but he couldn’t see why.

  —You will be nice to the customers, Kate, won’t you?

  She knew how to answer that. The precisely effective words.

  —Go to buggery!

  She still could not stop her head from jerking. She was as disappointed as that: he’d said it was adequate to pour the perfect beer and not have spillage through the drip tray but it seemed that he needed to know other things as well. Jack approached these other things by talk of his wife.

  —Listen, I’ve noticed a few similarities with you and the wife. Let me tell you … Connie gets depressed. But her sister was a great depressive. You see, she cut her own throat in a café the family owns at Goondiwindi. Closing time, about nine-thirty at night. She shuts the doors, goes to the sink behind the bloody counter and just cuts through her carotid, here.

  He touched the corner of his neck. She could tell from the tender way he did it that his own carotid would always be safe from any violence at his hands. She found him lovely therefore in his completeness, in his beer flab and his weakness, in his height and his dark complexion and his small farting noises of appeasement.

  —I don’t want any emotional troubles around here. I’ve got my hands full looking after Connie. See?

  He saw it as his task to keep Connie from handling a knife with intent.

  Kate decided to laugh. He could be got at by laughter.

  —So first I have to convince you I’m not a whore, and now I have to convince you I won’t kill Jelly in the public bar.

  He laughed at that. He was pitiably relieved at her joke.

  —Sounds silly when you put it like that, he conceded.

  —Of course it’s fucking silly.

  —Better not use that word in the bar, Kate. These blokes are pretty simple-minded. They presume any woman who uses that word is all in favor of it.

  That night, without being asked, she poured a Bundaberg rum and put it in front of the pyramid, Jelly. It was his standard drink. Thoughtfully, he drank a quarter of a bottle a night. Sticky distillation of the sun, and of Queensland sugarcane. Overproof.

  —What’s this about you and dynamite?

  She knew that Jack was listening in, though pretending to speak to someone down the bar. Jelly had, set amidst the jowls of his lower face, a well-formed set of honest features, and he could not stop them flushing with a sort of gratification, could not prevent the glitter in his green eyes.

  He said, You do something once in a country town and you cop the name for life. People talk as if it’s the only thing you ever done. I haven’t touched bloody gelignite for years. Pardon the language, love. We’re a rough pack of bastards in here.

  Jack intervened, chin held high. He had to endow Jelly with a seriousness Jelly was not permitted to endow himself with.

  —Be honest with the lady, eh. You got a bloody shedful of the stuff in the backyard. Maybe you’d better have a look at it, Jelly. See if it’s bloody sweating.

  —I’ve got nothing in the backyard, Kate, Jelly told her, looking up from under his eyebrows. I don’t even mow the bloody backyard. Not since my wife went home to her mother. No dynamite in the backyard. No bloody dynamite in the bedroom either.

  But he was just saying it to make Guthega and Jack laugh. He wasn’t using it as a lever, though other men laughed as much as if it were.

  —But you were a dynamiter once?

  —Listen, love, I’m a pensioner. I live on bugger-all. Used to be a fancied footballer and country selector. Used to work on the railways once too.

  Guthega laughed at this claim of having worked.

  —Bloody nifty-fingered in the goods yard.

  —Go to buggery, said Jelly to Guthega, and turned again to Kate.

  —I did some dynamiting in the ’62 flood. That’s true.

  Seemingly rehearsed, Jack had already fetched pencil and paper and now delivered it to Jelly. Jelly took both as if he expected them, as if the two of them had taken other wanderers through this tale.

  Jelly drew a diamond-shaped parallelogram.

  One side, he said, was the western highway named Eglington. Two others were the levee banks. The fourth side, the one closest to his right hand, was the branch railway, the Myambagh–Cobar line. The road was a natural levee, as was the railway. The two lines of citizen-made levees were on the lower ground and faced the direction the water usually came from when the whole western river system flooded. The levees completed the walls of fortress Myambagh, said Jelly. They were too low, though the Shire President McHugh said they were high enough. Everyone knew they’d have to be reinforced in floodtime with sandbags.

  Within the diamond the Bourke–Sydney railway (by which Kate had arrived in town) traveled on low ground through the center of Myambagh, but it was not for the moment germane to what Jelly was telling Kate. Out of the picture, near where the Cobar spur—which was germane—broke away, it crossed the Wrangle and went off seeking other towns.

  —I was a footballer in those days, prop for Western Districts. Bloody sight skinnier than I am now. Full of confidence, stupid as a rabbit. But I knew enough physics to see there weren’t aqueducts under the railway to take floodwater off once it breached the levees. A man didn’t need to be Einstein!

  He passed the map on to Kate for her full study.

  —A wall of water came in from the east, across the flats from the Bogan. As it’s been doing at least since the Stone Age. And we were all working on the levees, piling up sandbags like the bloody Egyptians, but the thing broke under the force of the flood. And everyone was dithering about the railway line—the cops said one thing, and the Shire President something else.

  —Old McHugh, said Guthega. Absolutely useless.

  Noel gurgled. It was filial assent.

  —So two other blokes and I broke into the dynamite store at the railway—gelignite, detonators—took it all out to the Cobar line. And we blew a great hole in the embankment.

  He lowered his voice and sipped his rum, and then said in a rum-aspirated voice, Before we did it, the water was already to the bloody roof trees. Now it emptied away west. People say the jelly bloody saved the town.

  —Bloody did, said Guthega.

  Bloody did. The Australasian Amen.

  Guthega turned to Noel.

  —You reckon you got enough go in you to do something that size?

  —I don’t know, said Noel.

  —I bloody do. Your moral fiber’s got sapped by the bloody wide comb …

  Noel looked away. Guthega often niggled him in the long purgatory of his dutiful nights. A champion without credit. Always invoked, always backhandedly praised to strangers, but always devalued.

  —No wonder he likes the bloody scabby wide comb, said his father, nasty with booze. Fucking terrified of spiders. Wouldn’t clean a fucking dead mouse out of the kitchen for his mother. Did it out of shame in the end. But you should’ve seen him trembling …

  He imitated craven trembling, and on
ly the Plaqueman laughed.

  Noel had gone pale. He walked out of the bar to stop himself hitting his father.

  —Jesus, Guthega, said Jack. You ought to be kinder to that boy. He’s a credit to you and all you do is tear him bloody down.

  —Go and apologize and tell him to come back in, Jelly instructed Guthega.

  —He’s entitled to come in on his own steam. If he’s too thin-skinned …

  But under the joint pressure of Jack and Jelly he was forced to rise and go to the door. Noel was waiting out there in the night, looking at the road and the peppercorns and the glint of railway lines.

  —Okay son, said Guthega. Don’t take it hard. Come in and have a drink with your old man.

  Noel came in but with a set face. It was probably the truth that he had a phobia of small and creeping things. Otherwise he could not have looked so betrayed.

  —Listen, said Guthega, turning to anecdote to make everyone forget his meanness. Did I tell you about this big feller from Coonabarabran … ?

  —Hang on, Jelly told Guthega. We’re still on the dynamite. Who’s strangling this bloody cat?

  In near-silence the Plaqueman tittered once, and Jelly went on.

  —Then, last time, ’86, I should of done it, but I didn’t. See, I was away with the footballers in Wagga. My mates from ’62 … one had passed away and the other’d moved to North Queensland. There weren’t any bloody young bulls left in town to blow the line.

  Guthega said, Those emergency services blokes wouldn’t know you were up ’em till you coughed.

  He winked at his son.

  —Well, next time, said Jelly evenly. Next time, I’m going to take no bloody notice of them at all, and I’ll just do it again. Bloody useless line anyhow. Blow the shit out of it. Pardon the French, Kate.

  Concluding, he conceded with a nod that she should keep his little map. His mouth looked delicate now. Myambagh’s flood history and his past missed chances made him wistful. Childlike. Someone’s lost darling boy. He and Jack had, she thought for an instant, been cruelly teamed because they were willing and expectant children.

  Jelly sank the residue of his rum and, deadly white around the mouth from resolve, looked Kate in the eye.