A Treacherous Country

by K. M. Kruimink

  Heron went about quite red for a while, then shut himself in the stone house with Mrs Heron and the old woman.

  Jack was so helpless to the rum’s effects that he was struggling against the movements of his own face when he stumbled to roll himself weirdly upon the tail of the beast.

  ‘The irons, Mr Fox! Those ridiculous-looking Contraptions from Timbuktu brought her down!’ he cried.

  ‘They are from America,’ I said. ‘Jack, please do excuse me—’

  ‘I will purchase them from you,’ he said. ‘They are Marvels of Modern Technology.’

  ‘Jack—please, will you take them as a gift? I have no wish to profit from them.’ I felt quite ill whenever I thought of them, now, and longed only to be perfectly free of them. Only imagine strolling along, shoulders unburdened by jagged metal! Only imagine being free of their distraction!—although, I thought, I should have to find some other loud item that would keep the flesh-eating birds away—a hand-held bell might suffice. There was no place in my life for harpoons.

  Jack stared at me with tears spilling from his drunken eyes. ‘I wish you had been here, Mr Fox, in the great seasons, when the sea was thick with fish of every kind and, if you wanted one, you only had to poke the waves with a sharp stick and see what you brought up. Why, the sea was more fish than water! One could step Christ-like from fish to fish across the tops of the waves! True!’

  ‘Sir, I thank you for your thoughts, which I believe you have already touched upon, earlier to-day. But really I must withdraw, for I am tired—’

  ‘Men laboured hot from the oil-fires and were cooled only by the sweat of exertion. Elsewhere upon the island autumn iced over into winter, I am sure, but the station was consumed! Consumed by a Tropical Heat! I remember whole years of my childhood here slipping by in one continual summer of plenty, the station its own little world of fire suspended amongst snowy hills and brittle forests and the sea, which is quite cold, you know!’ he told me, with an earnestness almost distressing to see.

  I assured him I understood quite well that the sea was cold. ‘Yes!—you were in there to-day with me. I had forgotten. Forgive me. But! Three chains of shore, two hot acres. Mr Fox! Hark! It was a good place, and it may yet be a good place. Please—please. When I turned fourteen it snowed in a perfect circle outside the buildings. True! In the slab huts we slept with the windows open and warm air breezing in and icicles twinkling in the trees beyond. Another time hail like fists tore through the branches and into the sea and we stood in the middle of it bareheaded under a clear blue sky and a gleaming Sun like God’s great eye too glorious to behold blinking down at us. One year the storm that shifted boulders and hurled trees raged while we sat about and drank rum and dear old Mary who has been Ancient Forever hung—hanged?—hung?—pegged the laundry to dry on lines strung between the huts, remarking that we would benefit from a touch of the breeze, while behind her the very cliff-face trembled!’

  ‘Jack—’ I said. This great speech was causing in me an apprehension which began in my gut and thence advanced into my empty pockets—for how many times should somebody try to convince me to buy the station? I feared I might become worn down with the constant selling, and finally acquiesce. And then what should I do!

  ‘In those days we hauled the marvellous Carcases end upon end from the sea. Like to-day! Like to-day, but every day—only nobody died. When I close my eyes, I can still see the lovely red wounds in a million different whales. A Hundred Million! And the ship! This was not long after my father had died, surely. The Tristessa was a beauty, Mr Fox! She was bought by a man called—well, I do not remember his name. But she operates out of Hobart-town now. I have seen her. When we had her, I would stare at the horizon and all at once she would—appear—from no-where!—appear before my eyes, huge-sailed, full-bellied, sinking under the weight of her Cargo! What a ship! Even to-day, I feel an echo of the thrill of rowing to meet her to disgorge her and tow her Cargo ashore. My lips, which to-day are soft, in those days cracked and bled with salt and wind. My hands were raw and oozing from the work! No—that is wrong. They are raw and oozing to-day, for I am now unaccustomed. In those days, although I was a boy, they were hard and horned like the thickest leather! We had dozens of station-hands and deck-hands—dozens upon dozens upon dozens of them, all getting rich, or, anyway, less poor, and speaking what must surely have been every language known to man. And there were the trading-days! Remember?’

  Here I had to remind him that I had not been with him in those days.

  ‘Of course you were not. You do not remember, but I do. The people! They were tall—they had a name—I do not remember it—they would come. What do you remember of them, Byrne?’ he asked, for that man had approached us from the great cooking-fire upon the beach, and stood listening to Jack’s ravings with a fired clay cup in his hand. ‘What were they called?’

  ‘I cannot say,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Well! They would come flickering amongst the forest of meaty flowers, half-rotten—but there were never flowers, why have I thought of that?—Mr Fox?—they would come, cloaked and painted with their hair in ropes, and their women shaven-headed and bare-breasted, from the slender grey trees, or along the sand, from the cold outside into the hot centre of the Earth with skins and game and vegetables to trade for whale-flesh and barrels of oil and whatever tea and sugar and flour we could spare, which was never enough, and I remember the cooking-fires burning as the red sun pooled on the sea horizon—which cannot be correct, for the sea horizon here is in the east—am I recalling a sun-rise?—at any rate, as night fell, their fires and our fires burnt in neighbourly fashion, or neighbourly enough, and the bounty of kangaroo steamer and damper and whale-meat and shellfish and rum and all the other things we had that were good, I cannot even remember them all now, passed from hand to hand into the night. I remember blue lights in the waves, dancing like nothing else—does anyone remember those?—blue sparks from an undersea fire, maybe. It sounds like Lunacy, but I know it is true! And green Ribbons of Light in the sky! I remember walking along the wet sand with the lights blossoming about my feet with every step! And the green above! In company! Other children with me saw it too and we ran and splashed each other with night waves full of—full of—light. Listen. This is important. There was a wall in the air, an invisible—what is the word? A membrane, dividing the station from the rest of the world. One could push through and be in the frozen wilderness outside. How my breath would hang white and the thrill of the cold would push under my fingernails until my hands went numb and it would freeze the juice in my eyes and shrivel my balls—excuse me for mentioning them—and punch down my throat to the very bottoms of my lungs! But there were ways to stay warm outside the circles of firelight! Boys and girls my own age running off with me into the forest to play. I remember becoming invisible when branches closed over the moon.

  ‘I was a boy then. As a man I have never known such excess. Try to talk about it with anyone but the old woman Mary and they tell me they do not remember, or that it was never thus.’

  ‘It was never thus,’ said the old O’Riordan, beside me.

  ‘Jack makes use of some poetic language,’ I said.

  ‘He practises,’ said the old man.

  ‘Yes, he stalks about the place with his lips moving,’ said Byrne. ‘Cook owed you a holey dollar,’ he added to Jack, coming to put a superstitious hand upon the whale’s flank. He shuddered.

  ‘I did not take his bet,’ slurred Jack.

  ‘Go to bed,’ said Byrne.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack, and laid himself down upon the sand, and shut his eyes. ‘When my father died, he let out a little sigh and crumpled like paper. And his skin crawled and tightened and drew his lips open so his false teeth popped out. It is a memory from very long ago, and I do not know how true it is.’

  ‘Memory is a frail thing,’ said Byrne softly.

  ‘Would you like us to help you to your bed?’ I asked Jack.

  As seemed to occur for every second questio
n I asked in that place, no one took the trouble to answer me, and I was left alone, as I had wished to be, but did not want, when the reality of it came upon me.

  ‘You live too much for the past,’ said Byrne to Jack—rough Byrne, with a voice so gentle! ‘And too much in your head. Things were not better then. And things will not be better to-morrow. I can tell you what the future will be. The future will be troubled, because Life is troubled. Look with clear eyes at this rosy past you describe to me and you will see it was then just as it is now and will be.’

  YOU ARE SORELY IN NEED OF A MAKING

  Hold a picture in your mind of an enormous obsidian obelisk blocking out the sun, erected a thousand years ago by a Tyrant to commemorate his own might. Weathered but not beaten, it is plated in a highly conductive metal that attracts an extraordinary quantity of lightning-strikes every year, which further blacken it, and imbue it with a fierce and fiery charge. It casts a long shadow like a spear, which points directly towards your quaking coward’s Heart. Conjure this dreadful image, and you will have some idea of the qualities of Mrs Prendergast. She was at least a thousand years old, and garbed in black with black veil, and her bent fingers were spiked with bright sharp rings, and she carried a gold-topped cane, and in every other way she was exactly the obelisk I have described, in the form of a human.

  Despite the growing night and the freezing air, I elected to take Pharaoh and go across the fields to the obelisk, rather than to travel by road in the greater comfort of the pony and trap (or, most comfortable of all, to be driven in the landaulette). Comfort is a Danger! It makes one soft. My perturbation of spirit was such that I welcomed the cold whip of the air. Mamma had always said that a bracing breath of fresh air was all one ever needed to knock sense into one. Many a time we had gone out together, afoot, charging up hill and down dale, to cure our diverse sadnesses.

  As Pharaoh’s hoof-beats pounded through the fields of my childhood, I made a cheering story for myself. Susannah had confessed to Mrs Prendergast that I had proposed, and told her that she (Susannah) had been so astonished that she had refused me, when truly she had meant to accept, and that she would like Mrs Prendergast’s guidance on how she might correct her mistake. And, my story went, Mrs Prendergast was indeed appalled at my poor timing, and that I had not first spoken to her of the matter. But, ultimately, she was warmed by the understanding of my honest heart, and my sincere love for Susannah, and had thus summoned me to, First, chide me, and Second, give me the girl. She would say something like, ‘Long have I considered that you would make her a good match, for though your father is a hard man, you have turned out differently. But you must promise to take care of her.’ And I would press Susannah’s hand to my bosom and make that promise, and Susannah would do or say something dear and modest.

  The black ground sped beneath Pharaoh’s great hooves, and the old trees bent and whispered. I passed from field to field, losing my courage at every gate to make the leap, instead halting Pharaoh, and dismounting, and opening the gate, and leading him through, and closing the gate, and remounting, very unlike the dashing Suitor. I was glad Father was not there to witness my timidity. At the last, however, I came to the low dry-stone wall bordering the final stretch of road to the Prendergast house. I could turn away, and ride for some distance from my destination, and go through another gate there—or I could charge boldly on and leap the wall! Without permitting myself time to grow afraid, I urged Pharaoh forth, moved my hands to his neck, and made the jump. I felt my Belly lurch, and my hat whip from my head, and the dreadful crunch as Pharaoh’s hoof clipped the wall. We landed clumsily, but intact. I drew him up and saw the half-broken stones, and my hat beyond, and thought that perhaps the story with which I had comforted myself was not true.

  There was an intimate extravagance in the pink and gold of the sunrise, unrolling its glow over the sea horizon, and melting into a day as bright and cold as diamond. The waves pushed against our oars. We were alive, all but one, skating along the earth’s midline, tiny between the giddy depths below and above. A black lump drifted ahead, far littler than the whale. At first I thought it some arrangement of dead branches, but as we drew near it floundered awake and disappeared beneath the surface. ‘Seal,’ said my Cannibal—William.

  Mrs Heron and Mary sat together in the very bow of the boat, and therefore I could not see them as I rowed, and yet I heard their soft voices from time to time.

  The men and I would row a straight south-westerly course, in favourable wind, keeping the coast starboard, and rowing and rowing, and allowing the sun to stain the sky from below the sea up and over our heads at its zenith and dip again down behind Mount Wellington and the spires of Hobart-town. That is what I was told, and I accepted it with the dumb resignation I had learnt from dear Tigris. Poor Tigris! She which I had bought with Mrs Prendergast’s money!

  The shadow of the obelisk stretched like a dagger right into my heart.

  Perhaps that is a touch melodramatic.

  I went like a little leaf in the water, pulled along by the current, letting an oar be put once more in my hands. This, although I thought I might vomit yet more at the mere thought of going out upon the sea again, and at the prospect of sitting all day in the company of the soft and dripping Cook, lashed down the middle of the benches, whom I had neither killed nor saved. God, whosoever You are, grant me return to the enclosed fields of England! Let me dwell once more where there is no Sea in sight, and my troubles are no greater than bulls getting shot, and a soul-deep shame about my mother’s treatment, and a father who does not like me, and a girl who will not love me!

  Although the way I had taken across the fields was quicker than the road, my stopping and starting had caused such delay it was quite dark when finally I gave Pharaoh to a groom and was allowed entrée within the Prendergast house. Pots of fragrant sage were either side of the carven door, and I pulled a leaf and rolled it between my fingers before I stepped within.

  Mrs Prendergast’s house was not ancestral, I fear. Father’s exception to the elderly lady was never that she was an obsidian obelisk, crackling with lightning. That he did not mind. What he did mind was that Mrs Prendergast had inherited an astonishing quantity money he thought she did not deserve from a benefactress, a titled Irish lady to whom Mrs Prendergast had been Companion in her younger years. She had thus been elevated all at once from a position rather lowlier. Her house was nicely made, I had always thought, very modern, with a ballroom larger and brighter than our own, and charming gardens, and sufficient appointments for the full complement of servants.

  The brisk manservant who had opened the door to me bade me tidy myself, right there in the hall. He took away my coat and hat (which I had retrieved whence it had flown from my head in the field) and pulled off his own gloves to bat away the dust from the place where I sit down. Tutting, he removed the bruised sage-leaf from my gloved hand, and then deprived me of the gloves themselves, as they were coarse riding-gloves. I did not know on whose authority he treated me so archly! The scent of crushed sage touched the air about us. At last, when I was brushed, stripped and beaten to his satisfaction, he permitted himself to conduct me into his employer’s presence.

  ‘Is Miss Prendergast in attendance of Mrs Prendergast?’ I quietly asked the man.

  ‘I am afraid I do not know, sir,’ he lied, with a short and dismissive bow.

  Mrs Prendergast was solitary in the drawing-room, arranged upon a green settee before the fire. Her black dress was draped dramatically against the velvet. A ridiculous will-o’-the-wisp of a dog lay snoring upon a red cushion at her feet. The lady held a leather-bound Bible, but she was not reading it, for it was closed. This Book bore an elaborate golden Crucifix stamped upon the cover. Her spectacles, also golden, were folded upon the arm of the settee.

  She looked up when the manservant announced me, saying, ‘Ah, good,’ and waving me forwards. Thus was I drawn into the presence of the obelisk, who was rather less obelisk-like when horizontal, and indeed rather small.
She was possessed of a strong chin and nose, but there was a softness about her I do not know that I had ever seen before. Her hair looked like a dollop of good cream in the firelight.

  ‘Sit there, Mr Fox,’ she said, pointing a knobbly finger at a low red chair to one side of the hearth, whose cushion, I silently observed, had been given to the dog.

  Mrs Prendergast was an Irishwoman, although she had resided in England as our Neighbour for as long as I could remember. Her dark eyes were grown milky, and her cheek sunken, but there was a quickness about her, and a sharpness, and a hint of wry humour. She had the perfect teeth of the old—that is, they were false.

  ‘Madam,’ I said. ‘I am honoured to attend you, and hope I find you well.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fox; my health is perfect,’ she said.

  ‘And long may it continue so,’ said I. ‘It is quite cold outside,’ I went on. After all, if I were speaking, she could not give me bad news. ‘The talk is that it will snow in the morning.’

  ‘Are you complaining about the ride over here?’

  ‘No! Madam—it is my honour and my pleasure. I am merely making conversation.’

  ‘Yes, we shall have a conversation, and not about the weather, either. Susannah is in quite a state, you know.’

  A flare of gorgeous hope! ‘I am most deeply sorry if I have caused the young lady any dismay,’ I said, the warmth of satisfaction in my heart. ‘I take it she may have spoken to you about the matter that passed between us?’

  ‘“The matter that passed between us”—what a peculiar turn of phrase. Do not be so coy, Mr Fox,’ said the old lady. ‘Did you imagine that she would not confide in me? Of course she did, for I am her guardian and her confidante. You proposed to her, and she refused you, and this upon the very afternoon your poor mother was so taken ill.’