by Nevil Shute
“I know.” Mary Nolan had told her that the other Charlie Zlinter had a way with him, and a body could deny him nothing. Perhaps these Charlie Zlinters were all the same. “Of course I’ll come with you, Charlie,” she said, unthinking.
He laughed, and met her eyes, still laughing. “I am not Charlie Zlinter,” he said. “I am Carl, and you are not Mary Nolan. That was fifty years ago. We are much more respectable people than that.”
She laughed with him, flushing a little. “I don’t know why I said that. I’ve been talking about Charlie Zlinter all the afternoon, I suppose.”
“I do not think it is a compliment,” he said. “Charlie Zlinter was a very bad, drunken man, and he was a bullock driver.”
She looked up and met his eyes, still teasing her a little. “Well, what about you?” she asked. “You’re a very bad man, and a lumberman. I don’t see much difference.”
“I am offended,” he announced. “A bullock driver is much lower in the social scale than a lumberman. I would not say that you were like to Mary Nolan. I would not be so rude.”
“I hope you wouldn’t.”
There was a pause; he looked from her across at the little rapids of the river, at the smooth water running to the stones. Then he turned to her again, smiling. “I might have said it,” he remarked. “Mary Nolan was kind to a man who was very far from his own home. I might quite well have said that you were like to Mary Nolan.”
She did not answer that, but dropped her eyes and picked a little piece of clover in the grass that she was sitting on. “Also,” he said, “I think that Charlie Zlinter, although he was not a very good man—he was in love with Mary Nolan. I think perhaps that is another likeness.”
“Lonely people often think that they’re in love, when they aren’t really,” she said quietly. “It must take a long time to be sure you’re properly in love with anybody, and not just lonely.”
“Of course.” He reached out and took her hand and held it in his own hard brown one. “Will we be going to the Howqua tomorrow?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “If you want to, Carl.” More and more like Mary Nolan, she thought, but she could deny him nothing. “If you’re quite sure that it’s safe for a girl so like to Mary Nolan to go back into the Howqua.”
“It is very safe,” he told her. “There is no Charlie here, only a Carl. No bullock driver, only an unregistered doctor full of inhibitions and repressions.”
She laughed, and withdrew her hand. “I wouldn’t put much trust in those,” she replied. She got to her feet. “I’d love to come with you tomorrow, Carl,” she said, “We’ll make it all right with the Dormans, one way or another.”
They began to walk back across the paddock to the car, very near to each other but not touching; to ease the tension she began to question him about the house that he wanted to build in the Howqua valley, how big it was to be, what would it be built of, and how would he get the materials in there. He told her that it would be very small and simple, no more than twelve feet long by ten feet wide; he could afford sawn timber for a house of that description and he thought that he could get everything he needed from the sawmill at Lamirra and get a lorry driver to take it up to Jock McDougall’s paddock on a Saturday; from there Billy Slim could probably get it down for him on a sledge, or he would borrow a horse and a sledge from Billy and shift it himself. He would roof it with tarred felt sheeting of some sort. He thought that he could build it in the week-ends before winter. It would be very simple inside, with just one built-in bunk and a fireplace and a table. “It is all I need,” he said. “Just somewhere to be at the week-ends and to leave fishing rods.”
She said, “And you’re going to build it on the site of Charlie Zlinter’s house?”
“I think so. I do not really think that Charlie Zlinter was related to me, Jenny. There are many Zlinters in Pilsen. It would be pleasant if he was, but anyway, I do not think that we shall ever know. But since there was a man of my name there, if his house was in a pretty place I will build mine where he built his, because we came from the same town. I think it will be pretty; from the map Buller Street ran up the hill not far from the river, and not far from the track that leads down to the crossing now. Perhaps the track itself was Buller Street; perhaps Billy Slim will know. But if it is a pretty place, I will build there.”
Jennifer said, “It sounds as if the house you want to build will be just about the same size as Charlie Zlinter’s house.”
He nodded. “We are very much alike, both living as single men, both working with our hands, not rich men either of us. My needs will be no more than his needs were. I think it may be very like his house.”
She thought of Charlie Zlinter’s house as Mary Nolan had described it to her when she saw it last, the swinging open door, the pail half full of water, the loaf gone green with mould, and the bedclothes that a possum or a rat had made a nest in. She shivered a little. “I’m not sure that I like the thought of building there,” she said. “Perhaps it’s an unlucky place.”
He felt for her hand, and took it in his own as they walked along together. “We will go and see it tomorrow,” he said. “We shall know as soon as we are there if it is a lucky or an unlucky place. I think perhaps it knew great happiness, that place, and if that is true it cannot be unlucky.”
They walked up to the road in silence, hand in hand.
At the old Chevrolet they stopped, unwilling to get into it and drive away. The sun was dropping down towards the tops of the hills; it was time that they were making their way home to Leonora. They lingered by the car a little without speaking, and now he was holding both her hands. “It is here that we should say good-bye,” he said at last. “I will not stay tonight long at the Dormans.” He hesitated. “It is very impertinent and very wrong,” he said, “but may I kiss you?”
She smiled up at him, colouring a little. “If you want to, Carl,” she said.
He put an arm round her shoulders and they stood locked together by the car for a few minutes. Presently she drew back a little, still standing in his arms, and said softly, “I don’t want you to go away with the idea that I’m in love with you, Carl.”
He stroked her cheek, and said smiling, “What are we doing this for, then?”
She said, “Because I don’t suppose you get a chance to do this very often in the camp. How long is it since you did this to a girl, Carl?”
He thought back over his life, holding her in his arms and caressing the soft hair behind her neck. “In 1943—eight years.”
“Poor Carl.” She drew closer, and kissed him on the lips. “Eight years is a long time.”
Presently he released her, and they got into the car and drove back, sitting very close together in the sunset light, through Jamieson and Banbury to Leonora station.
Ten
JACK and Jane Dorman stood on the veranda of their homestead next morning, watching the old utility as Carl Zlinter drove it to the road across the paddocks, with Jennifer beside him. The grazier made a little grimace, and turned away. “She’s going to tell him, I suppose,” he said.
His wife nodded. “She didn’t want to tell him here, with all of us about.”
He glanced at her. “You think she’s really serious?”
“She’s serious, all right,” Jane replied. “I must say, I think a lot of her for this. There was never a doubt in her mind about what she ought to do.”
Jack Dorman kicked the leg of a deck-chair. “He couldn’t have married her,” he said. “Anyway, not for years. He’s got another nine months to do in the camp for a start, and then another three years as a student if he wants to be a doctor. It’s probably all for the best.”
Jane went to the door of the kitchen. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. She’s not known him very long—she may forget about him. She’ll have a bad time, though.”
Jennifer sat quiet by Carl Zlinter as he drove the Chev from the Lamirra road up through the paddocks on the way to Howqua, getting out at each fen
ce to open the gate for him to drive through. She was tired and rather pale, but she had worked with Jane to get a nice lunch ready for him; whatever might have happened, it seemed to her important not to spoil his day. It was the same fine, cloudless summer January weather that they had had all the time that she had been at Leonora, the same thin wisp of smoke curled up from behind the Buller range, the same flocks of white cockatoos shrieked and wheeled in shining clouds from gum tree to gum tree in the paddocks that they drove across.
As they passed from the paddocks into the woods she roused herself, and asked him, “How are you going to find out where the cabin was, Carl?”
He smiled down at her. “I have a surveyor’s tape and little wires with coloured marking rags on them,” he said. “They are in the back. I have asked Jim Forrest if I might borrow these things for today.”
“Those are what you use for measuring out, are they?”
He nodded. “I think we can measure and find where the cabin was. If Billy Slim is there, he will help us.”
They drove on up the track to Jock McDougall’s paddock, and the crimson and blue parrots flew ahead of them through the woods as they had before, and a wallaby loped off among the trees till it was lost in the dappled sun and shadows of the aisles. Presently they came up to the meadow at the top of the ridge, and parked the car in the shade, and got out. Jennifer stood looking out over the wide view, at the line after line of blue, forest-covered hills merging into the distance in the bright sunlight.
“This must be one of the loveliest places in the world,” she said. “This is where I should want a cabin, if I lived in this country.”
He smiled at her. “It would be wet and windy and cold up here in the winter,” he said, “with deep snow sometimes. It would be more comfortable down in the valley, by the river.”
She did not answer, but stood looking out over the blue ripples of the forests, storing her memory. He glanced at her and noticed for the first time that she was pale and drawn, almost haggard. “You are looking tired,” he said. “Shall I see if we can drive the Chev down to the river?”
She forced a smile; she must not spoil his day. “I’m all right,” she said. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, that’s all. A walk’ll do me good. We’d better not risk getting the Chev stuck, or we might not be allowed to have it again.”
They turned to the utility and took their lunch, and the grill, and the surveyor’s gear out of the back. He would not let her carry anything. “It is quite all right,” he said. “If there is any more argument, I will carry you too.”
She laughed. “I’d like to see you try,” she said incautiously.
He dropped everything and caught her round the waist and lifted her quickly off the ground. For a moment she rested in his arms, feeling secure for the first time that day; then she put on the mask of flippancy again, and laughed down into his eyes. “All right, you big brute,” she said. “Now put me down again. I knew I wasn’t going to be safe here with a Charlie Zlinter, in these woods.” He put her down, kissed her on the cheek, and released her, flushing and laughing, and bent to pick up the various packages and baskets.
She stood by him, confused. “I wouldn’t like to think that this kissing business was developing into a habit,” she said.
“It is the usual thing,” he assured her. “In my country we kiss everybody good-morning.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” she replied. “And anyway, this is Australia. If you go round kissing every girl you meet good-morning, you’ll find yourself in trouble.”
“I would not want to kiss every girl I meet good-morning,” he said. “Only one.” She made a face at him, and they set off together down the track into the Howqua, all care momentarily put aside.
When they got down on to the river flat where the house had been, they left the baskets and parcels at the end of the wire bridge, and crossed to Billy Slim’s house on the other side. They found him chopping wood in the shade; he straightened up and greeted them. “Morning, Jenny. Morning, Carl. Come fishing?”
“We have not come to fish,” the Czech said. “You remember when last we came here we talked about the town of Howqua, and where Charlie Zlinter lived?”
“That’s right. You was talking of buying an allotment.”
The Czech said, “I have found out now where Charlie Zlinter lived.”
“Where’s that?”
“Number Fifteen Buller Street.”
The forest ranger scratched his head. “Buller Street,” he said. “Somebody once told me where that used to be…. Was it up the hill, off Victoria Avenue?”
“I have here a map,” said Zlinter. “I found one in the Shire Hall at Banbury, and I have made this copy.”
They went into the living-room of the house and spread it out upon the table. “My word,” the ranger said. “All the years I’ve been here, this is the first time I’ve seen a map of Howqua. That’s right, there’s Buller Street, there’s Victoria Avenue, and there’s the river.” He studied the map for a minute. “Aw, look,” he said. “It must have led up the hill just a little way upstream from the track. Looks like it was the old track down into the town.”
Jennifer said, “Perhaps that’s why he lived there, because it was on the track out of the town.”
“Too right,” the ranger said. “That’s where a bullocky would want to live.”
Carl Zlinter said, “Do you know anything left on the ground from which we could measure, to find where he lived? I have a tape.”
“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” the ranger said. “Let’s get across the river and see. I’d like to have a copy of that map some time.”
“I will make you one.”
Two hours later, two hours that had been spent in measurement and argument over the dim lines on the land and the pencil tracings on the map, they reached agreement. They were standing on the slope of the hill fifty feet or so above the river overlooking the meadow where the town had been. Here there was a small space of flat land, about half the size of a tennis court, in the middle of the woods.
“This must be it,” the ranger said. “This’ll be where Charlie Zlinter lived.”
Jennifer said, “It must have been a much larger house than I thought. Mary Nolan said that it was just a little cabin, of one room.”
“Aw, look,” the ranger said, “this wouldn’t all have been the house. He’d have to have had a place to put the wagon, and maybe a store for hay and that. The house would only be on just a little bit of this flat. If you wanted the exact place, you’d have to dig around a bit. You’d find stumps in the ground, maybe, or else the fireplace.”
“I would like to do that,” Zlinter said. “If I come over to your place, may I borrow a pick and spade?”
“Sure,” said the forest ranger. “Borrow anything you like.”
Jennifer walked with them to the bridge. Carl went across with the ranger to the homestead to get pick and spade, and she picked up the lunch basket and carried it back to the forest flat where Charlie Zlinter had lived. She dropped down upon the grass in the thin shade of the gum trees and sat waiting for him to come back with the tools. She was tired, very tired with sorrow and joy too closely mixed, glad for him that he had found so beautiful a place in which to build his fishing hut, sad for herself that she was never going to see it.
He came back to her presently and found that she had laid a cloth upon the grass and put the food out on it. “We’d better not make a fire here, had we, Carl?” she asked. “I wouldn’t like to see you start off by setting the forest on fire, and we’ve got masses of cold meat here that Jane gave us, without the steaks.”
He looked around. “I would like to find Charlie Zlinter’s fireplace and cook a steak on it, for ceremony,” he said.
She smiled. “We’ll dig around a bit after lunch, and cook a ceremonial steak.”
They ate together on the grassy patch of ground, examining it as they sat and speculating where the cabin had been. Presently Zlinter got up
, sandwich in hand, and drove the spade into the vertical hill face, at the end of the plateau furthest from the river. The earth was blackened with soot.
“Here is the chimney,” he said quietly. “By making the house so, against the bank, it was more easy for him; the earth bank itself would make the back of the fire, and the heat would keep it solid. What was above could easily be made of wood. In this way he would need no bricks at all.”
They discussed this as they sat eating; it seemed reasonable enough. “Will you make your cabin like that, Carl?” she asked.
He thought about it for a minute. “I do not know,” he said. “In the winter, when there is no fishing, my cabin may be empty for several months, and then the earth will be wet, and there will be no fire to keep it dry. It might fall in upon the fireplace. I think it will be better if I arrange my cabin differently, and have a brick chimney away from the earth bank, perhaps on that side, over there. I do not think it would be good to build my cabin right against the earth bank, as he did. It would be better to build it here, where we are sitting now, and not use the bank at all. The water might run down and into the cabin when I am away.”
She nodded. “Put the wall about three or four feet from the bank,” she said. “You don’t want to get the other wall too near the outer edge, though. The earth might slide there, mightn’t it, with the weight of the walls?”
He measured it with his eye. “It is to be only a little place, no more than twelve feet long,” he said. “I have not got enough money for a palace.” She laughed. “I think there will be plenty of room. But you are right; the inner wall should be three or four feet from the earth bank, and then there will be room outside the river wall to make a veranda and a bench to sit on and look out over the river, or perhaps a deck-chair.”
She smiled. “You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you?”
He laughed, a little embarrassed. “It is important to me, this, to have a little place that is my own.”
“I know,” she said. “You must have that, Carl, and you’ve picked a lovely place for it.”