The Drover's Wife & Other Stories

by Murray Bail

  Aberdeen’s overlapping movements and noise alarmed him. Men and women displayed a careless attitude as though they were exaggerating their freedom. Hume was holding a small suitcase. To avoid pedestrians he executed a series of comical swerves, in front of women absurdly theatrical. He’d scarcely seen one in twenty years.

  His first words were directed at a man smoking a strange brand of cigarettes.

  ‘A room, if you have one.’

  Apparently not loud enough.

  ‘I would like a room, please.’

  Once there Hume stretched out on the bed and trembled with confusion. The rushing sensations of Aberdeen, which resembled a violently twisted kaleidoscope, or those paintings by the Italian Futurists, were gradually interrupted by the familiar scenes from the prison, calming Hume. His spoon: yellow, sharp around the edges. He saw the ridge of dirt around the cell bars where they met the floor. The pattern of shadows across the exercise yard repeated itself. That blackhead on the warder’s face—below the eye—needed squeezing. The other warder: his name he always forgot. He remembered queuing for meals and the soggy smell. The first jet airliner slowly crossed overhead, all men looking up. There was the barren arrangement of his cell, empty corridors, echoes. Prison architecture consists almost entirely of straight lines.

  In the morning he ventured out, more relaxed. He passed new buildings and failed to recognise old buildings. He seemed to be approaching his old neighbourhood. Rubbing his hands he anticipated the pleasure of ordering a meal he hadn’t tasted for twenty years. They rarely served a good steak in prison.

  The pub was familiar, although its name was not. He chose the table with uneven legs near the door. He was taking his first sip from a pint of beer when a man came through the door. The way others greeted him showed he was a regular customer.

  Hume lowered his glass. He went up to the bar. He listened carefully before touching him.

  ‘Neil Macdonald?’ he murmured. ‘Scrag?’

  Macdonald turned around. His face had filled out. His hair was no longer dark.

  Macdonald’s body arched back in surprise, wrenched by the hair, his hands clutching the air for balance. He fell to the floor, Hume on top. Hume broke a bottle. He stabbed and stabbed again at the face. The bulging throat burst. Macdonald’s body subsided, became smaller. They lifted him off. Hume was sobbing, already shaking his head. Images of the prison returned, repeating themselves.

  11. At least one person who is always the life of the party.

  Bob Knudsen was born in 1924 at Denver, Col., the son of an Irish mother and half-German father. He made little impression at school, was rejected by the US Army when America entered the Second World War, but became a pilot in the Canadian Flying Corps. After the war he attended the University of California for a time and then led a roving life, becoming in turn a ranch hand, fruit-picker, dish-washer, lumberjack, signwriter, nightclub waiter, and car-park attendant. In 1952, the year of his marriage, he took a job as a coal-heaver at his local power station and wrote The Power and the Pain (1953) between the hours of midnight and 4 am. The Big Hate followed in 1955. He now lives on the outskirts of Toronto with his wife, five children and ‘two guitars’. He lists his other interests as skydiving, photography and local politics.

  12. At least one person who is not afraid of death.

  Here we have an ‘overlap’. The person carefully detailed in (3) as one ‘not afraid of life’ is also not afraid of death. See also persons (6), (7), (8). Surprising, Huebler, the number of people not afraid of death.

  Frank Carpenter should be called Graves, he is as clumsy as hell. Certainly, everything happens to him. At the point where the lines of chance intersect Carpenter is usually standing, or about to place his foot fatally forward. That he had learned to steer clear of ladders has not prevented him from spilling liquids; clutching at eggs; burning fingers on handles; relying on rotten gutters or hollow tree-branches; falling off logs. His movements cause alarm and laughter among others. His large slow hands. The elongated shoes. He collides with head-waiters and cyclists. Treads on his wife’s flowers. Replacing a glass he’ll miss the table’s edge by a good two inches. As a boy his nose used to bleed. Now it perpetually leaks, apparently draining him of vital co-ordinating fluids.

  Graves is cheerful and enjoys reasonable health. His body has so much iron it demagnetises clocks, compasses and gramophones. He is one of those who activate faulty lampshades; then tripping over the cord he’ll turn, full of apologies.

  Wales. (U.K.)

  13. At least one person who manages to imagine another in the place of his, or her, lover.

  I tore this out of the London Times on June 16, 1973. It can be reprinted here without changing a word.

  Dubai. June 15.—An Englishman rescued from the Atlantic off West Africa told reporters today of how he jumped from a ship into the ocean after thinking he saw his dead wife in the water.

  Mr Lawrence John Ellis, aged 31, said he stowed away in a container ship at Liverpool with a friend on May 15 because he was anxious to get to Australia where his wife had died last December.

  He and his companion were allowed to work in the ship after being discovered, but he ‘became very depressed’ thinking about his wife.

  ‘Nothing could stop me remembering my wife that night of May 21…As I walked on deck I believed I could see her in the water beckoning to me…So certain was I that I got two lifebelts, lashed them together, and dived into the sea. I quickly surfaced and began to search for my wife. The water was ice-cold and I saw the lights of the ship disappearing.’

  Mr Ellis said that with the coming of the dawn and the sun he thought he was going to die.

  Badly sunburned he was about to give up hope of rescue but he saw one or two ships and waved. They did not see him so he decided to strike out for the shore. He was 100 miles off the coast of Guinea.

  Finally, after 10 hours in the water, he was seen and picked up by the Italian tanker Esso Augusta.

  The captain was not allowed to put the rescued man ashore at Cape Town so he arranged for him to be transferred to a supply boat at Dubai where Mr Ellis stepped ashore today.—Reuter.

  14. At least one person who had achieved purposelessness.

  One man, gentleman in Straubing, West Germany, is spending his fortune in an attempt to recreate Ludwig II of Bavaria’s artificial forest, complete with the mechanical animals, artificial whistling, the whirrings and arboreal crunchings; another (recently retired) man (white-haired) in Bairnsdale, Victoria, is devoting his remaining days to removing the weeds from the silent rows of his local Pinus radiata forest; a fire-watcher with blue eyes in Ontario, in what is claimed to be that country’s largest commercial forest, has stood in a silver tower for thirty-four years, every day just about, binoculars handy, thermos of coffee, packed lunch, connected to the outside world by field telephone, without once seeing smoke; an old woman dying in Munich has a ladder hanging over her bed; while in London, in Battersea, two men living in the same street (Dagnell St) are trying to assemble the definitive collection of matchbox labels, and they have some beauties, though each is unaware of the other’s existence.

  15. At least one person who is convinced his or her experiences would make an interesting nov—

  16. At least one person who wants to be liked by everyone.

  His employer said, ‘He is a conscientious worker who doesn’t call me George all the time like the others. I like that. In this business you get sick of the familiarity which I tell you is a load of bullshit. He knows too I won’t have the radio on in the afternoons, he’ll accept that, while the others kick up a fuss. Some nights he’ll help me sweep up afterwards and ask about the kids and so forth. He’s made some suggestions for the shop, some viable, like displaying the combs and blades near the cash register, though I can’t say yet I’ve noticed the difference in the till.’

  His postman said, ‘That Mr Johnson knows about pigeons. He never forgets. He told me he used to keep pigeons once. They wer
e Blue-beaks.’

  A customer said, ‘Where he gets his information from God knows. The one he gave for the three-fifteen came in. He knows the names and weights backwards. Maybe he reads the newspapers or he was a jockey once. Nice little feller.’

  His waitress said, ‘Oh, he’s nice. We even know his name: Mr Johnson! He always says a word and leaves something behind.’

  The second hairdresser said, ‘Old George, he turns off the transistor after lunch and Gordo turns to us, “Now I’m on, boys,” he says. “What’ll it be? ‘Dr Zhivago’? ‘Strangers in the Night’?” He’ll whistle all afternoon, if necessary. He can even do a good “Black and White Rag”. Like all of us he hates the work and old George, and wants to get out. We’ve talked about opening our own shop.’

  Another customer, ‘Nice little feller.’

  A neighbour said, ‘Gordon Johnson opposite: we’d only recently moved in and he gave me a bag of fertiliser. He must have seen me putting in the vegetables. Can’t say I really know him exactly, even though we’re on quite a friendly first-name basis.’

  His daughter said, ‘I don’t know, I just feel I can talk to him more. He’s a million times better than her. When she starts getting on my back I go straight to him. Sometimes I have to meet him at the corner to get in first, before she sticks her claws in. He makes jokes about her to me. If I want anything—money, or anything—I ask him, not her.’

  His wife said, ‘Gordon doesn’t say much now. I can see he’s listening though. I tell him everything, oh yes. I look forward to him arriving home. When he’s around it’s better, naturally. I say, though, he doesn’t talk much, but I suppose I like that in a man; a quiet one.’

  17. At least one person whose existence was foreordained.

  In an old country where the physiognomies have long ago been settled people take their faces for granted. Young countries are perhaps not so lucky. The Australian Face, even the American Face, is not finished yet. In Australia the signs are the jaw and large ears will become characteristic, but what are they—a mere two hundred years old? Interesting how speech patterns evolve faster: but that’s another story.

  The example here of a person ‘whose existence was foreordained’ could only come from an old country. Here, it is Italy.

  Others have surely noticed her in Verona. She has a small vegetable stall in the main market. While the other women screech out their bargains she only smiles slightly. She is a woman of simple, arresting beauty. This woman—her face, shoulders, folded hands—first appeared during the Renaissance. Then, she was the wife of one Francesco de Giocondo. Leonardo painted her portrait. Now she has appeared again. Not reincarnated, but repeated by an overlap of Italian genetics. Italy is old enough.

  Her face is surrounded by an oval of darkness. It’s her hair curving down merging with a blouse of similar colour. Attention is drawn naturally within to her skin, the puffy curves which almost make her voluptuous, yet not quite. Some hesitancy hovers in her eyes. She is still young. Vasari in his over-rated Lives writes that Leonardo employed musicians and jesters ‘to keep her full of merriment and so chase away the melancholy that painters usually give to a portrait’. This is nonsense. In the market in Verona she holds that smile all day without artificial assistance. Where she differs from Leonardo’s portrait is her name, which begins with a different letter, and her folded hands—on her marriage finger she has a thick gold ring.

  And this.

  Close up, as one occasionally sees in young northern Italian women, she has the beginnings of a small moustache. With her though it was perhaps inevitable. Marcel Duchamp painted one on in the year 1919.

  18. At least one person who hears voices.

  Yes, Joan has been hearing voices on and off for seven years now. She is a switchboard operator. The clamps of spring-steel they use in the Edinburgh Exchange are an ancient design, squashing the ears, which is probably why Joan has sensible hair, never permed, short like a boy’s. What was that, Huebler? The girls get along fine, she’s popular, chattering between calls. There are several avenues of girls, pulling out wires, constantly changing a pattern, hypnotic to watch, a strange job to have when you think about it, though it can’t be as bad as Persian carpet-weaving, which has a similar appearance. Joan met her husband, if met is the right word, through her job: a maroon wire plugged in and there was his voice. She was on night shift. Of course, you get a lot of lewd bravado on the part of men who have nothing better to do, especially at night, than ring up for a joke, on the off chance of…you know what. Depends entirely on the mood of the girls. His voice was deep, easy, and made her laugh. I think you’ve been drinking. Tell me the colour of your hair, he replied. It was a fine answer on his part. In her job she often wondered what a particular voice looked like. Just a minute—she had other calls. I think I’ve got her, he winked at the boys, all of them jammed in the telephone booth. But it was raining. They met the following night. (She wanted to make sure anyway.)

  His voice had been deep and confident, yet she saw a thin small man, plainly nervous; he was alone. He stepped off a 350cc AJS single, coil front springs, brass Amal carburettor (another old design). One shoelace was undone. He was a bookie’s assistant, soon to lose his job. Car’s getting fixed, he explained, nodding to the leaking motorbike. She was to discover later he didn’t have a car. Odd then that it should continue, she efficient, sensible, the clear voice over the telephone, while he, never mind his name, specialised in the narrowly missed opportunity, always, and yet a boastful casualness; she spent two years on and off the AJS, sitting in his pubs with his male friends who ignored her. She married him. Takes all types.

  The other girls who had shaken their heads all along nod their heads in unison, vindicated. He has left her. Of course. All right. These things happen. Joan is back where she started, hearing voices. She has a son, his, and has to avoid the night shift.

  19. At least one person totally without charisma.

  He can be seen between the hours of 9.30 and 12.30 and, after lunch, 2.30 and 5.30. Go down Firestone Boulevard, Los Angeles. Gross the lights near the Gulf pumps. On the left is a men’s store. Stand before the window. Watch: eventually a window mannequin will move slightly. Usually the elbow of an outstretched arm growing tired, or the fixed smile. This is George Ellison, a human dummy. Good God! What is the world coming to?

  Little is known about Ellison. At home he has a daughter and son. The son, about to enter college, answers him back.

  I suggest you use a tripod for this one, Huebler, but you’re the expert. I don’t know how Ellison is going to react with you taking his picture there. The manager says he has had the job for eleven months. The brainwave was his (the manager’s) to put a living person in the window. But even to discuss the subject seemed to throw the manager into a curt mood. Ellison is doing the job so exactly it is hard to distinguish him from the real mannequins. How he’ll even show in a photograph, Huebler, I don’t know.

  20. At least one person who is poor but happy.

  Of course the word ‘poor’ is relative.

  An uncle of mine, a relative, laughs at everything I say and hasn’t got a bean. I think he owes money. ‘To hell with the expense, give the canary another seed’ is one of his mottoes, if not his philosophy. ‘My philanthropy,’ he argues. He laughs. I laugh. He’s always making weak jokes like that. ‘Seeing you’re travelling on the Titanic, why go steerage?’ Good question. The rest of the family doesn’t laugh. He wears sandals, open-necked shirts. For several years he lived in a garage and later on the edge of town in a shack made from kero tins. He doesn’t feel the cold. ‘You should be on the stage,’ he says to my father, a solemn opposite, ‘the next one leaves in five minutes. Don’t miss it.’ Even my mother laughed. All this shows that my uncle is happy.

  He was never on stage, though he regularly mentions a friend who was. It was a balancing act which depended on centrifugal force. The friend would swing a bowl of goldfish around his head without spilling a drop. The RSPCA complaine
d and he then changed to carrots. My uncle argued that fish in a bowl could only swim in circles anyway. He once passed a multi-millionaire being assisted into his limousine by the chauffeur, and cried out, ‘Good evening, sir. It must be such a helluva burden. Can you spare a shilling?’ Normally he never discussed anything serious.

  Yet he will discuss anything! He is loved by door-to-door salesmen, hitch-hikers, barmen, moneylenders, tourists and women. He has strong red health. That helps. He said it was because he has never read newspapers.

  I mentioned women. There’s a funny thing. For all his obvious popularity with them in the short term he has subsequent trouble over the long haul. My uncle has been three times divorced. A fourth woman, who would have been another wife, he lost in a motor accident. ‘Fourth time is lucky,’ he says, making us laugh. At this my mother scarcely smiles. Women like him and give him money, yet they continue to leave. Still, that’s not our business. My poor uncle will be happy to be photographed.

  21. At least one person who is incapable of sin.

  Here are two, a brother and sister. They share a house in Belfast, a stone’s throw, no less, from the Falls Road. Wall to wall, all similar, the houses share the same roofline. It can be a snake in the mist. Net curtains preserve their secrets. The brother and sister have the wallpaper left by their parents, smelling of moisture and peeling, the original colour shown by a bright cross-shape around an old nail. They were born in poverty, and although almost fifty they sleep together in the one bed, a habit beginning in childhood and allowed to continue into their teens, their parents dying within a year of each other. They wear flannel nightwear, although by early morning her gown is sometimes above her head.

  The brother is a large slow man with fat hands. He has blue eyes. He goes off early to work in the Harland and Wolff shipyards, a welder, know to be harmless, a Catholic among nine thousand, mainly Protestants. They leave him alone. When one of them begins a dirty story he moves away. For lunch he has white sandwiches, cut by his sister.