Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  She played all of those sweet things that Mr Tasker had chided her with having said had been purloined in the name of the Lord — without intrusion of the Lord into any of them now. She la-la-la-dee-dahed any she was moved to express herself vocally over, but mostly was content to rock her fair thin frizzy head in keeping time and to smile the joy it gave her, watching the boundless appreciation of her small audience, standing with eyes fixed on her cavorting fingers and lips moving as if they savoured and drank in the swee’sness. Then she gave him some Grieg, Butterflies, a Delibes, Dance from Coppelia, Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu. She said, ‘I could go on for hours . . . and still the well would not be dry.’ She sighed: ‘That’s what I’d love to do all day . . . just play and play . . . on a good piano, of course. I dreamt of being a concert pianist when I was young. But I haven’t the strength . . . physical or moral. First, my mother and father hated me playing scales. Poor Mother used to yell at me: “For God’s sake, girl, if you’ve got to play, play something tuneful . . . and something we know.” You have to practise and practise to be good, of course. That takes a lot of stamina. I showed how little I have by giving in to them . . . poor dears! But we’ve got to practise and practise don’t we? Now come on. The Major scales to begin with. Remember? C-D-E-F-G-A-B- and C again. La-la-la-la- la-la-la-La! Heeeee! That’s it . . . that’s it. Now do it backwards . . . Oh, I’m so excited I’m forgetting to pump!’

  And so it went. For variety she had him pick out the Melody in F with one finger.

  There came, at length, a thumping and bumping next door that caused Kitty to say, ‘That’s Fay. She’ll be making tea, after being out in the rain somewhere looking for news, or sending it off, or something. I’d love to call her in to join us. But she can be so rude. And she’d only want to ask you questions . . . who your father is, and all that. What’s it matter who your father is? Perhaps it’s better even not to know.’ She sighed again, and to his urging began to play again, Mozart, Divertissement in E-Flat. She said when she’d finished it, ‘They call it the most perfect thing in an imperfect world. But there’re so many perfect things, really . . . I mean not only in music. But what about some of your own music? I’ve been hearing that you sing at night . . . your own songs. Is that true? Then sing me one.’

  Prindy sang My Rown Road, while she stared amazed. There was no whiteman kill-him-die in this version. ‘Let’s try and play it, shall we?’ she asked. It was she who did it — and soon got it. But he didn’t look pleased. She asked him why he didn’t like it. He only shook his head. She said, ‘I think it’s the instrument. That’s a very simple melody. It’s like a bird-song. That’s how you sing it. The reed-sound is too harsh. It needs sweetness . . . the simple sweetness of wood-wind. If only we had a flute . . . but I can’t play one. Even a tin-whistle would do. Yes . . . I’ll see if I can buy one . . . for next time. But let’s try it again . . . in a higher key . . . Oh, but there’s David back!’ Sound of steps out on the verandah. She looked at her wrist watch. Only two-thirty. Hammering on the outside door. As she rose to go to the door she said, ‘Maybe he’ll stay and have a cup of tea with us . . . and that’ll make it a little longer, eh?’

  It was not David, but the Reverend Mr Tasker, and wearing such an expression as to cause Miss Kitty’s face, glowing with happiness all these hours, to blanch. She had every reason to expect the Reverend Gentleman to be annoyed with her, even angry, but never to see him eyeing her with such blazing rage. For greeting he fairly shouted in her face, ‘How dare you . . . how dare you place me in this invidious position!’

  The blood swept back to her face, so that her hair looked pale as dead grass in red earth. Clinging to the door-handle she began to gasp an explanation: ‘As the truck was loaded . . . and David . . .’

  ‘David!’ he roared. ‘That reprobate . . . and with your connivance, Madam, your cunning connivance!’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t mean to connive, Reverend . . . I . . .’

  ‘You don’t think it connivance and deceit to make a bargain with that . . . that serpent I have nurtured . . . so that you both could have the use of the truck for your improper and illicit business?’

  Miss Kitty breathed incredulously, ‘Illicit?’

  ‘Yes . . . illicit, nefariously illegal, and . . .’

  Out of the tail of her goggling eye she saw a movement of the other door like this along the verandah as a gust of the wet wind tried to pull it from the hand holding it open a crack, and after a swift glance, she gasped, ‘Won’t you come in Reverend?’

  He had seen the glance and guessed its meaning, and shut his wide-jerking mouth so that his face was a red hard square again. As she stepped back, he followed her in. He stared at Prindy, standing in the doorway of the sitting-room staring at him. As Miss Kitty got him into the sitting-room she turned and said, ‘I’m really very sorry, Reverend . . . but I didn’t think it would matter so much . . .’

  ‘Not matter so much to risk betraying our sacred institutions into the hands of our secular enemies, at such a critical time as this in affairs . . . and for the mere whim of occupying your idleness on a wet day?’

  Staring at him, she muttered, ‘Betraying?’

  Mr Tasker had stopped shouting; but his voice was harsh with pent feelings. ‘There’s no other word for it that I can say. You don’t belong to our faith, I know . . . and I’ve sometimes doubted your respect for it. But I felt sorry for you in your rejection by your own church people, your Anglicans, who refused you access to their organ because of your supposed reputation.’

  Miss Kitty flushed and demanded with some spirit, ‘My reputation?’

  ‘I’m sorry to refer to it . . . but I’ve heard insinuations about you and . . .’ His eyes made the slightest movement towards Fay McFee’s quarters. ‘I repeat I felt sorry for you in your need for expression of your musical talent and took you as our organist. And this is how you repay me. If that’s not betrayal, tell me what is!’

  Kitty drooped before the glaring eyes.

  The little silence that followed was broken by more steps on the verandah. A tap at the door. She said hastily, heading for the door, ‘That’ll be David now. He’ll explain.’

  Mr Tasker snapped, ‘David is in the Lock-up!’

  She stopped, to goggle at him, to clutch at her slack mouth. Tasker added: ‘That will be Mr McCusky come to take the boy away.’

  She went to the door. It was Eddy McCusky, hat over one eye, which he didn’t bother to touch in salutation to a lady. In fact his only greeting was: ‘Where’s the boy?’

  She struggled for the words. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll get him.’ She returned to the sitting-room, beckoned to Prindy, put an arm about him as she led him to the door, leaned a little against him, whispering, ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  McCusky heard it: ‘You won’t be seeing the boy again, Miss Wyndeyer. I haven’t made up my mind yet whether to prosecute you or not over this affair. But I certainly shall if I find you interfering with him further.’

  He took Prindy from her, pushed him out onto the verandah. Miss Kitty gasped, ‘Prosecute me?’

  McCusky half-turned away, pulling the hat down a little further. ‘You were specifically informed that you were not to take the boy out of the custody I’d placed him in. You’ve deliberately committed an offence under the Protection of Aborigines Act. Your superior informs me that it wasn’t with his connivance . . .’

  Mr Tasker, just behind Kitty, shouted, ‘How dare you use the word connivance in connexion with me, Sir?’

  McCusky swung on him, eyed him insolently: ‘It sounded mighty like connivance to me. You started off by wanting to hold some sort of shivoo at the Compound . . .’

  ‘I started off nothing, Sir!’

  McCusky went on unperturbed: ‘Next you want the children down at the Mission . . .’

  ‘Leave me out of it, I tell you!’

  ‘I certainly won’t leave you out of my report on the matter . . .’

  Kitty cut in: ‘Mr Tasker hadn’t
anything to do with it, Mr McCusky. It was all my doing. I . . . well, I just couldn’t help myself.’

  McCusky eyed her for a moment, then asked, ‘Are you pleading that it was a mental aberration that caused you to plan the whole thing?’

  She murmured, ‘Mental aberration?’

  ‘Well . . . you’re a . . . a maiden lady . . . frustrated motherhood and all that. There’s a half-witted boy . . .’

  She cried out, ‘Oh, don’t say that. He’s a genius!’

  McCusky said, ‘I won’t prosecute you, Miss Wyndeyer. But kindly keep away from the boy. Goodday to you . . . and to you, Your Reverence!’ He touched his hat this time, turning to push Prindy out off the verandah.

  Mr Tasker shouted, ‘I’m not Your Reverence . . . I’m not a papist priest!’

  McCusky leered: ‘Have it your own way, Mister,’ and grabbed Prindy and did a rush with him through the rain to his car.

  Mr Tasker said to Kitty, ‘You will also kindly keep away from the Mission Centre, Miss Wyndeyer. I’ll send someone to pick up the harmonium. God be with you!’

  Miss Kitty was more interested for the moment in waving to Prindy, a glimpse of whom could be seen looking out through a celluloid window in Mr McCusky’s side-screens. She waved. Then as Tasker reached the edge of the verandah she asked quickly, ‘Why did they have to lock David up?’

  He turned for a moment: ‘If you don’t think they had every reason for doing so, then I can only pity you.’ With that he went.

  Miss Kitty stared till his big old car disappeared into the rain. Then suddenly, with a choking cry she turned and rushed into the house, flung herself sobbing into an armchair. A moment later a strong stout arm was flung about her shoulders, and through her tears she saw Fay McFee, and dropped a head onto the ample bosom that went with the arm. ‘There now, there!’ crooned Fay. ‘What’ve the bastards done to you . . . the Bible-bashing and Fascist-strutting bloody bastards? Here . . . I’ll get you a whisky . . . that’ll make you feel better.’

  There was to be whisky-drinking also up at the Compound when Mr McCusky arrived and handed the innocent cause of all the trouble over to Mr Turkney. It happened that as McCusky’s car pulled up before the Superintendent’s residence, Nell, watching from the Adult Quarters, no doubt expecting them, since news of things of Compound concern travelled swiftly there, went rushing over through the rain, to arrive looking so dishevelled and distraught that, when Turkney would have hunted her, perhaps less indulgent out of deference to his superior, the latter in his official bigness said, ‘Aw, let her stay a while. She won’t be seeing so much of him later. Christ, Tub, I could do a drink!’

  From the conversation over the whisky between Mr McCusky and Mr and Mrs Turkney, while mother and son sat huddled together in the conservatory below, peeped at by bright-dark eyes from slits in the flapping canvas blinds of the similar place across the way that served as school room, something of the circumstances that must have so bewildered Miss Kitty Wyndeyer in the last half-hour were revealed. It would seem that Missionary Man David had been conducting a liaison with one of the big girls of the Children’s Home, a quarter-caste, Wilhelmina Whitehead (surely one of Mr McCusky’s namings!) and that they had been taking advantage of the picnics to indulge their passion and had intended to do likewise during the affair planned for today had it come off. This much Wilhelmina had confessed. Well, when David had arrived this morning with the keg of ginger beer, being trusted as a Missionary Man, he had been allowed to take it right into the home unescorted to set it up for the children, and while there had made an assignation with his lady-love and given her a screwdriver as a means to keeping it, the same to be used to remove the front of one of the boxes covering the sanitary pans in the privy, (or dunny as those discussing the business called it, in accordance with local usage). ‘Fancy crawling through a dunny to get it,’ Mrs Turkney declared. ‘They’ll come at anything!’

  The dunnies of both halfcaste homes were built against the fence with the doors of the boxes outside, through which the nightmen could remove the pans without entering the premises, a very necessary arrangement in the opinion of those responsible for the girls, since the nightmen were themselves halfcastes.

  Thus Wilhelmina had got out, taking advantage of the rain, and made her way to David waiting off the Hospital road in the truck. They then drove away to Shelly Beach, the beach below Jumbo Delacy’s place, where the coconut grove was, a favourite place for lovers. He’d said they had hours and had nothing to fear because Miss Wyndeyer had made a bargain with him to use the truck to take Wilhelmina out for taking that little boy and the organ to her home. It wasn’t the sort of day you’d expect to find other lovers at Shelly Beach. But there was another couple, no other than Miss Lilyponds, the Compound schoolteacher, and her boy friend. Although David had declared that he was positive Miss Lilyponds had not seen them as they passed the parked car, he was soon proved wrong.

  Evidently Miss Lilyponds, ever a spoil-sport, had lost no time in reporting the matter to the police, who had come and caught them clipping in the cabin and done all that might be expected of guardians of public decency, which included charging David with an offence under the Aboriginal Ordinance.

  Mrs Turkney said she didn’t relish the idea of having that idiot boy put in with her kids. He was too big a boy to begin with. You never knew what he might get up to with the girls — ‘Or the girls with him!’ said Mr McCusky with a guffaw. ‘D’you know, when I was running this show, those kids used to ride each other . . . the girls. We caught ’em at it a couple o’ times . . . I think I told you, didn’ I . . .’

  Mrs Turkney, looking displeased, said stiffly, ‘Yes . . . you did.’ And she shot a significant glance from her husband to the bottle, because it was evident that Mr McCusky was getting under the weather.

  Turkney said, ‘Well, one for the road, eh? We’ve got to see to feedin’ the brutes. No chance of whippin’ the kid back to Jumbo’s, eh?’

  McCusky, rising, said thickly, ‘Not a ’ope in ’ell.’

  Turkney slipped an arm about his shoulders. ‘But he’s been doing all right there . . .’

  His wife chipped in. ‘Besides, his mad mother might give us more trouble if he’s here all the time . . . and we’ve got trouble enough as it is.’

  McCusky, who perhaps had seen that glance of hers, turned on them as he was about to go out and, banging his hat on and pulling it over an eye, snapped slurrily, ‘’s wha’ you get paid for. If you can’t take it . . . ’s plenty more’d like the job . . . see you!’ He went out onto the rain-swept stairs, descended uncertainly, then went running to his car.

  Turkney showed his teeth at his receding back, snarling, ‘You bastard!’

  Mrs Turkney wasted no time in sending Nell back to her quarters, telling her that she could see the boy once a day, for half an hour after he finished school — provided they both behaved themselves. She kept Prindy waiting under the house until the girls, looking like some brown monster heaved up out of the sea and taken quivering and lurching and full of strange sound to the land, came over from the kitchen under a sheet of tarpaulin. Then gathering him under her big umbrella, she took him across to the home.

  Supper consisted of two thick slices of that stuff they called bread, one to be spread with beef dripping, the other with apricot jam — with, as a treat because of the auspicious day it was and the unexpected evil thereof, ginger beer. Where was Wilhelmina? Up in the dormitory crying, Matron. Matron went to look. Last time she asked for her, at midday dinner, they’d said she was in the dunny with the gripes from drinking too much ginger beer — and she, poor fool, had believed them. Never believe ’em — that’s what everybody said.

  Every crumb had to be swept up because of Miss Lilyponds in the morning. Whatever the weather was like tomorrow they’d have to eat in the dining-room, because of Miss Lilyponds. One crumb and she’d complain. ‘And I’ve got trouble enough,’ said Mrs Turkney.

  It was customary for them to go up to the dormito
ry at sundown. They did it earlier tonight, because you didn’t know when it was sundown, anyway. Prindy was allotted a cot in a corner of the verandah closest to the house. ‘So that I’ll hear you if you play up,’ said Mrs Turkney. Then she left them, locking them in.

  Most played quiet games in the dark. The exceptions were Prindy, whom they ignored, and Wilhelmina, who lay and cried and cried. Later Prindy added to the entertainment by singing in his sleep, all manner of songs. Even Wilhelmina stopped crying to listen. They whispered amongst themselves, ‘He jitty . . . he pretty boy . . . but he jitty.’

  Then it was another day. Breakfast of that porridge and that bread and treacle, had out in the dining-room without much inconvenience, because the rain had eased considerably and the wind dropped. No one complained here about the food, and not simply because Mrs Turkney was sitting at the head of the table, as was evident from the way they put every scrap of it away, weevils and all, even Prindy and Wilhelmina.

  When Miss Lilyponds arrived at nine she had a little chat with Mrs Turkney about the affair of yesterday. She was young, was Miss Lilyponds, only about twenty, and prettyish, although it could have been the heavy make-up and the very nicely marcelled blond hair. All the girls admired that hair, even though they detested Miss Lilyponds. She said to Mrs Turkney, quite loudly, so that everybody in the schoolroom could hear, ‘Never believe ’em. I told you that when you first came here. Never believe ’em . . . and never trust ’em out of your sight. They’re dingo niggers, remember . . . dingo niggers.’

  When Miss Lilyponds had got everybody settled down to the school work she reckoned they were capable of doing, she took a look at Prindy, stared into his grey eyes with her own grey-green, asked him a question or two, and getting no answer but the stare, said, ‘We’ll put you in a corner down the back. Here’s a slate for you, and a slate pencil. Just amuse yourself.’