by Murray Bail
‘How am I?’ she asked in a small voice. She was speaking to me. The gap opened between her teeth as she smiled.
It allowed me to place my hands under her arms. She was much heavier than I imagined, I could feel the soft swell of her breasts. She allowed my hands to remain there; she was my sister.
I looked at her once more. ‘Are you all right?’ I was on the point of saying, ‘Is this what you want?’ Other questions reached my tongue, but her body had surrendered, and by then I had taken an interest in the whole technical question; I began gathering momentum. In an almighty heave-ho, putting my whole body into it, I let go.
Trust and optimism were always her main characteristics. Now she tilted her chin, and dog-paddled among the stars, then clasped her hands more like an angel than my sister. Putting her trust in me she was now putting her trust in him. I concentrated on the mole near her lip, a point of focus, until it too began diminishing, along with the pale hopes of her body, gap between teeth, fringe, balanced on one foot, listening: all this blotted out by the chimney.
I heard Mr Limb’s cough. He was setting out on his evening walk, for health reasons. I felt so much around me slipping, accelerating, beyond my grasp; for I was left with nothing. Running from my side towards the light I began calling my sister’s name, to where she had gone.
The Drover’s Wife
The Drover’s Wife (1945)
There has perhaps been a
mistake—but of no great importance—
made in the denomination of this picture. The
woman depicted is not ‘The Drover’s Wife’. She is my wife. We have not seen each other now…it must be getting on thirty years. This portrait was painted shortly after she left—and had joined him. Notice she has very conveniently hidden her wedding hand. It is a canvas 20 X 24 inches, signed l/r ‘Russell Drysdale’.
I say ‘shortly after’ because she has our small suitcase—Drysdale has made it look like a shopping bag—and she is wearing the sandshoes she normally wore to the beach. Besides, it is dated 1945.
It is Hazel all right.
How much can you tell by a face? That a woman has left a husband and two children? Here, I think the artist has fallen down (though how was he to know?). He has Hazel with a resigned helpless expression—as if it was all my fault. Or as if she had been a country woman all her ruddy life.
Otherwise the likeness is fair enough.
Hazel was large-boned. Our last argument I remember concerned her weight. She weighed—I have the figures—12 st. 4 ozs. And she wasn’t exactly tall. I see that she put it back on almost immediately. It doesn’t take long. See her legs.
She had a small, pretty face, I’ll give her that. I was always surprised by her eyes. How solemn they were. The painting shows that. Overall, a gentle face, one that other women liked. How long it must have lasted up in the drought conditions is anybody’s guess.
A drover! Why a drover? It has come as a shock to me.
‘I am just going round the corner,’ she wrote, characteristically. It was a piece of butcher’s paper left on the table.
Then, and this sounded odd at the time: ‘Your tea’s in the oven. Don’t give Trev any carrots.’
Now that sounded as if she wouldn’t be back but, after puzzling over it, I dismissed it.
And I think that is what hurt me most. No ‘Dear’ at the top, not even ‘Gordon’. No ‘love’ at the bottom. Hazel left without so much as a goodbye. We could have talked it over.
Adelaide is a small town. People soon got to know. They…shied away. I was left alone to bring up Trevor and Kay. It took a long time—years—before, if asked, I could say: ‘She vamoosed. I haven’t a clue to where.’
Fancy coming across her in a painting, one reproduced in colours like that. I suppose in a way that makes Hazel famous.
The picture gives little away though. It is the outback—but where exactly? South Australia? It could easily be Queensland, West Australia, the Northern Territory. We don’t know. You could never find that spot.
He is bending over (feeding?) the horse, so it is around dusk. This is borne out by the length of Hazel’s shadow. It is probably in the region of 5 pm. Probably still over the hundred mark. What a place to spend the night. The silence would have already begun.
Hazel looks unhappy. I can see she is having second thoughts. All right, it was soon after she had left me; but she is standing away, in the foreground, as though they’re not speaking. See that? Distance = doubts. They’ve had an argument.
Of course, I want to know all about him. I don’t even know his name. In Drysdale’s picture he is a silhouette. A completely black figure. He could have been an Aborigine; by the late forties I understand some were employed as drovers.
But I rejected that.
I took a magnifying glass. I wanted to see the expression on his face. What colour is his hair? Magnified, he is nothing but brush strokes. A real mystery man.
It is my opinion, however, that he is a small character. See his size in relation to the horse, to the wheels of the cart. Either that, or it is a ruddy big horse.
It begins to fall into place. I had an argument with our youngest, Kay, the other day. Both she and Trevor sometimes visit me. I might add, she hasn’t married and has her mother’s general build. She was blaming me, said people said Mum was a good sort.
Right. I nodded.
‘Then why did she scoot?’
‘Your mother,’ I said thinking quickly, ‘had a silly streak.’
If looks could kill!
I searched around—‘She liked to paddle in water!’
Kay gave a nasty laugh, ‘What? You’re the limit. You really are.’
Of course, I hadn’t explained properly. And I didn’t even know then she had gone off with a drover.
Hazel was basically shy, even with me: quiet, generally non-committal. At the same time, I can imagine her allowing herself to be painted so soon after running off without leaving even a phone number or forwarding address. It fits. It sounds funny, but it does.
This silly streak. Heavy snow covered Mt Barker for the first time and we took the Austin up on the Sunday. From a visual point of view it was certainly remarkable.
Our gum trees and stringy barks somehow do not go with the white stuff, not even the old Ghost Gum. I mentioned this to Hazel but she just ran into it and began chucking snowballs at me. People were laughing. Then she fell in up to her knees, squawking like a schoolgirl. I didn’t mean to speak harshly, but I went up to her, ‘Come on, don’t be stupid. Get up.’ She went very quiet. She didn’t speak for hours.
Kay of course wouldn’t remember that.
With the benefit of hindsight, and looking at this portrait by Drysdale, I can see Hazel had a soft side. I think I let her clumsiness get me down. The sight of sweat patches under her arms, for example, somehow put me in a bad mood. It irritated me the way she chopped wood. I think she enjoyed chopping wood. There was the time I caught her lugging into the house the ice for the ice chest—this is just after the war. The ice man didn’t seem to notice, he was following, working out his change. It somehow made her less attractive in my eyes, I don’t know why. And then of course she killed that snake down at the beach shack we took one Christmas. I happened to lift the lid of the incinerator—a black brute, its head bashed in. ‘It was under the house,’ she explained.
It was a two-roomed shack, bare floorboards. It had a primus stove, and an asbestos toilet down the back. Hazel didn’t mind. Quite the contrary; when it came time to leave she was downcast. I had to be at town for work.
The picture reminds me. It was around then Hazel took to wearing just a slip around the house. And bare feet. The dress in the picture looks like a slip. She even used to burn rubbish in it down the back.
I don’t know.
‘Hello, missus!’ I used to say, entering the kitchen. Not perfect perhaps, especially by today’s standards, but that is my way of showing affection. I think Hazel understood. Sometimes I coul
d see she was touched.
I mention that to illustrate our marriage was not all nit-picking and argument. When I realised she had gone I sat for nights in the lounge with the lights out. I am a dentist. You can’t have shaking hands and be a dentist. The word passed around. Only now, touch wood, has the practice picked up to any extent.
Does this explain at all why she left?
Not really.
To return to the picture. Drysdale has left out the flies. No doubt he didn’t want Hazel waving her hand, or them crawling over her face. Nevertheless, this is a serious omission. It is altering the truth for the sake of a pretty picture, or ‘composition’. I’ve been up around there—and there are hundreds of flies. Not necessarily germ carriers, ‘bush flies’ I think these are called; and they drive you mad. Hazel of course accepted everything without a song and dance. She didn’t mind the heat, or the flies.
It was a camping holiday. We had one of those striped beach tents shaped like a bell. I thought at the time it would prove handy—visible from the air—if we got lost. Now that is a point. Although I will never forget the colours and the assortment of rocks I saw up there I have no desire to return, none, I realised one night. Standing a few yards from the tent, the cavernous sky and the silence all around suddenly made me shudder. I felt lost. It defied logic. And during the day the bush, which is small and prickly, offered no help (I was going to say ‘sympathy’). It was stinking hot.
Yet Hazel was in her element, so much so she seemed to take no interest in the surroundings. She acted as if she were part of it. I felt ourselves moving apart, as if I didn’t belong there, especially with her. I felt left out. My mistake was to believe it was a passing phase, almost a form of indolence on her part.
An unfortunate incident didn’t help. We were looking for a camp site. ‘Not yet. No, not there,’ I kept saying—mainly to myself, for Hazel let me go on, barely saying a word. At last I found a spot. A tree showed in the dark. We bedded down. Past midnight we were woken by a terrifying noise and light. The children all began to cry. I had pitched camp alongside the Adelaide–Port Augusta railway line.
Twenty or thirty miles north of Port Augusta I turned back. I had to. We seemed to be losing our senses. We actually met a drover somewhere around there. He was off on the side making tea. When I asked where were his sheep, or the cattle, he gave a wave of his hand. For some reason this amused Hazel. She squatted down. I can still see her expression, silly girl.
The man didn’t say much. He did offer tea though. ‘Come on,’ said Hazel, smiling up at me. Hazel and her silly streak—she knew I wanted to get back. The drover, a diplomat, poked the fire with a stick.
I said, ‘You can if you want. I’ll be in the car.’
That is all.
I recall the drover as a thin head in a khaki hat, not talkative, with dusty boots. He is indistinct. Is it him? I don’t know. Hazel—it is Hazel and the rotten landscape that dominate everything.
Life of the Party
Please picture a pink gum tree in the corner of a backyard. This is a suburban gum sprouting more green in the lower regions than usual, and a tree-house hammered into the first fork. A stunted tree, but a noteworthy one in our suburb. I live with my wife Joy and two boys Geoffrey and Mark in a suburb of white fences, lawns and tennis courts. It has its disadvantages. On Sundays drivers persist in cruising past, to peer and comment as we tend our gardens. I wonder what their houses are like. Where do they live? Why do they drive around to see the work done by other citizens? Let me say I am concerned and curious about these things.
Last Sunday was a day of warm temperatures; pure pleasure, really. Tennis sounds filled my ears, and the whine of weekend lawnmowers. There was smoke from burning autumn leaves. I went down to the back of my yard, waited, looked around, and climbed to the tree-house.
I am forty-five years of age, in reasonable shape all round. On Sundays I wear brown shorts. Still it was a climb which was tricky in spots, and then as I settled down the house itself wobbled and creaked under my weight. The binoculars I placed on one of Geoffrey’s nails; I moved my weight carefully; I surveyed my backyard and the squares of neighbouring houses. Half an hour remained before the party began.
On my left was Hedley’s, the only flat roof for miles. He was out the front raking leaves. The sight of rubbish smoke billowing from that tin drum of his made me wonder at lack of thought. We had no washing on the line but was Hedley’s act typical of a nonconformist, the owner of a flat-roofed house? It was just a question. It reminded me of his car (a Fiat), his special brand of cigarettes, his hair which was going slightly grey, and his wife, Zelda. Everything she did seemed to begin with Z. An odd game, but true. It was Zelda who owned the street’s zaniest laugh, had zealous opinions on the best-sellers, and always said zero instead of the more normal nought or nothing.
In the next house I could see a tennis game. That accounted for the steady plok, plok and random shouts. I trained my glasses on the play without knowing the score. The antics of those people in slow distant motion was quite fantastic. To think that a wire box had been built to dart about in, to chase a small ball in, and shout. That was George Watkins. As director of a profitable girdle factory he has an inside story on human fitness. He’s also a powerful surfer and when I see him walking he shouts to me, ‘How you going, Sid?’
The first time I played a game with big Watkins he aced me and aced me in front of his friends and my wife. Invitations have been received since, but I miss the game to avoid additional embarrassment.
Across the street I could distinguish the drive and the side of Pollard’s leafy yard. This is a Cape Cod type of house. As expected Pollard was there, walking up the drive, stopping at plants, hands in trousers, pausing, checking bricks, until he reached the footpath. There, he looked up and down, waiting for mail, visitors, his Prodigal Son, news of some description. He parades the width of his house, a balding figure with a jutting stare like the house.
To my right a widow lives with her daughter. The street was alarmed when Gil died—he seemed to be as healthy as any of us. A short time after, she had a swimming pool dug and tiled and can be heard splashing during days of hot temperature. From my position, as I waited, the waters were calm. Then I thought I saw a man there, lying beneath one of her pool trees, a solid hairy specimen, on one of those aluminium extension chairs. No? The glasses showed an image of some description. She is wearing slacks, and is blonde and nervous.
Finally, there was the house next door on my right. The binoculars were hardly needed: I was looking down into the weedy garden, and as usual not a soul could be seen. These neighbours are the J. S. Yamas. In three years I suppose I have seen them…a dozen times. We have not spoken yet. He has nodded, yes, and smiled, but not spoken. This indifference deeply offends my wife.
‘It’s wrong the way they don’t mix in!’
‘Why?’
‘You can’t live by yourself,’ she says. ‘What if something happens?’
That was her frustration as I remember it. Naturally enough, the Yamases’ silence made them more and more discussed. The street kept its eyes open. Thinking about it: the Yamases have a private income; he could be a scholar of some sort; it could be, of course, that one of them is in shocking health, though I doubt it from what I sense of the place. He looks foreign, not Australian, and a fairly decent type.
At that time my yard was silent. Joy was at our beach-house with Geoffrey and Mark. I had said to them on Saturday night: ‘Look, I have to duck up to town tomorrow.’ Arriving, I arranged the place and made for the tree-house. I had raised the Venetians and left the screen door open. We have lawn smoothing over most of our yard and concrete blocks form a path. (I used to say that ours was a two lawnmower house—one for the front and one for the back—until people took me seriously.) Halfway between the back door and the tree stands a permanent brick barbecue, tables and white chairs.
I had invited a dozen or so couples. On the tables I placed plenty of beer, glass
es, knives and forks, serviettes, and under Joy’s fly-proof net a stack of steaks, sausages and piles of bread rolls. Tell me a friend of yours who doesn’t enjoy a barbecue on Sunday! From Geoffrey’s tree-house I waited for the guests to arrive. Then a movement occurred on my left. A door slammed, floral dress fluttered, down my drive came Norm Daniels and his wife. With the binoculars I caught their facial expressions. They began smiling. He adjusted his blue short-sleeved shirt as they neared the front door.
I waited. The Daniels now came around the house, puzzled by the no-answer at the front, seriously looking down the drive; certainly bewildered. Had they arrived on the wrong day? Then, of course, they turned and sighted the barbecue all laid out, and their relief was visible.
Daniels was monk-bald to me as I stared down. He waited among the tables as his wife called through the back door, ‘You-who!’ She smiled at the fly-screen, then shook her head at the tables and chairs.
‘Not there?’ Daniels asked.
‘They must have gone out for a sec.’
He looked at his watch, settled back, and began eating one of my rolls. ‘Want one?’ he asked. She shook her hair. Surrounded by someone else’s fresh meat and utensils, she seemed uncomfortable.
Another car pulled up. Daniels went over to the drive.
‘Down the back!’ he called out.
It was Lennie Maunder. About fifty, he was as soft as pork, wore Bermuda shorts, and had a bachelor’s lopsided walk.
‘No one’s here,’ Daniels explained. ‘They must have gone out for a sec. I’m Norm Daniels. My wife, Joan. Pleased to meet yah. We might as well hang around till they get here.’
They sat down and I couldn’t catch all their words. It was a distraction trying to listen to them and watch for the next arrival. The word ‘insurance’ floated up to my tree, so I knew Daniels had started on occupations. They were not drinking at this stage, and when Frank and elegant Georgina Lloyd came down they seemed embarrassed, caught as it were, and stood up stiffly, bumping chairs, to smile.