Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  They went and did the job in a single day. Next day they flew across and landed there, and took off again without hazard. Next day they flew in to Beatrice, alone, because there now was no one at Lily Lagoons who wanted to forsake the safety of the ground for the realm of birds and devils.

  They flew over Beatrice Homestead, of necessity, because it was under their flight-path in the prevailing wind, but made no circuit as a call for transport from the strip, because they had no intention of using it. They dropped down to the Racecourse, while the household stared after them.

  Perhaps it was the obvious slight that caused Clancy to turn from them scowling as they came towards the Railway Station from the bridge. Still, he could have been feeling somewhat guilty, as well as just as miserable as they about the loss of that Little Darling of theirs, knowing that at least one of them had lately talked with her.

  As the train came in, and Pat Hannaford gaped his surprise at seeing Jeremy, Jeremy gave him the Communist salute, changing it suddenly with upjerking of the thumb to the indecent gesture of contempt it then meant. Pat went crimson and missed his customary Fascist salute to Station Master Collings.

  Having got the mail, and finding Pat pretending to look at wheels and couplings, Jeremy gave him not the tale of his adventures amongst his comrades he evidently wanted to hear, but a loud dissertation on those worthies, how they worked in dingo packs, with the connivance of their supposed enemies, the police, whose purpose was to keep the peace for the greater profit of their worst enemy, the beef baron. ‘The great reformers!’ he jeered. ‘The End Justifies the Means, they say. So does a bloody crook. Get what you want . . . no matter how you get it!’

  Pat tried blustering, but was obviously outpointed from the start and being made to look not only the associate of criminals but a fool into the bargain before a goggling crowd that even forgot the call of the grog in wonderment what it was all about, stopped it by playing the good old Commo trick of the Diversionary Tactic, spotted Fergus grinning at him, and leapt away from his too-powerful assailant, to snarl, ‘What you grinnin’ at, Bunny?’

  Fergus paled, but maintained the grin. ‘Don’ know quite . . . trying to figure it out . . .’

  ‘Maybe this’ll help yo’!’ Pat aimed a ginger sooty fist that could have put another split in the bunny lip. But Jeremy was after him, shouldered him aside. Pat swung on him. Jeremy squared up. Then Pat dropped his hands, growling, ‘I ain’t fightin’ an old man.’

  ‘Not without your dingo mob, eh?’

  ‘You know bloody well I don’t need no mob to do me fightin’.’

  ‘But you pick your marks, eh, Comrade? That boy’s only half your size.’

  ‘I’ll ’ave him and your squatter-bastard son on together!’

  The Knowles Family were just off the train and somewhat the worse for wear, Ma Knowles the worst since not having the alcoholic capacity of her males. She screeched, ‘Give it to ’em, Pat . . . father son and . . .’

  ‘Holy Ghost!’ laughed Fergus.

  She turned the screech on him: ‘Shut your bunny mouth, you dirty German spy!’

  Everybody looked surprised at that. Ma liked it, tossed her flowered squatteress’s hat. ‘Yeah . . . that’s’t he is. Trying to get that Tantalite o’ ours for the Huns. Tried ’o get Dad mixed up in it, too . . . and him a Returned Soldier.’

  Fergus, quite red, snapped at her, ‘You bloody old liar . . . he’d’ve been right in it if he could.’

  ‘’Ear him, ’ear him?’ she squealed to the mob. ‘He admits he tried it. He admits he’s working for the Huns!’

  Oh, the look in the eyes of the crowd! Fergus took it in, grunted, ‘Aw!’, went off up the line.

  Pat yelled after him, ‘Nazi bastard!’ Then he had a shot at Jeremy: ‘Great mates you got!’

  But Jeremy had no time to answer, because of another diversion. Now Fergus was embroiled with Clancy. He rushed to fling them apart, yelling at them, ‘Bloody fools . . . couldn’t fight your way out of a green-ant’s nest . . .’

  However, Mrs Knowles wanted to fight, and leapt to it, screeching to her men, ‘Come on, boys . . . give ’em the beltin’ o’ their lives . . . this Hun spy and this claim-jumpin’ dog Delacy.’ Her men were tardy about it. But she struck a blow for the family and its ancient grievance, with the back of her bony ringed hand across Jeremy’s still tender eyes. She would have given him more, only Stunke grabbed her.

  Blinking tears, Jeremy hastened away to where Tom Toohey, who was to take him and Fergus back over the bridge on his trolley, was waiting. Fergus came on his heels.

  As they set off on the trolley, Fergus yelled in Jeremy’s ear, ‘That Krupp business was before I got to know you. I didn’t hear any screaming about spies when I took the Kruppsers down to Mount Prince Albert. Matter of fact, I happened to overhear old Ned trying to explain to them that the easiest way to deal with you, seeing you had it all tied up with law, was to pay someone to shoot you . . . and because you’ve got no heirs and successors who have legal rights, it would go to your sons, who he reckoned would be glad to do business with ’em. Trouble was, the Kruppoes didn’t have enough of the Knowleses kind of English to savvy . . . and the way they spoke to me afterwards, thought he meant that if they went near you you’d shoot them.’

  Jeremy didn’t laugh, only growled, ‘Bastards! What sort of species does a man belong to?’

  ‘Eh?’ howled Fergus above the pop-and-clang. ‘Haven’t I heard you say . . . a very noble one, only wanting the opportunity to grasp his nobility?’

  ‘I must’ve been drunk.’

  So over the bridge, back into the plane, back into the air. No waste of time on saluting the township of Beatrice today.

  They got home in time for the last radio sked of the day, on which came a message for Fergus: The Hun-Duns are in town. Over dinner Fergus told Jeremy: ‘I’ll have to get going in the morning, to pick up Whiskers. While I’m with him, I’m safe from ’em. Besides, they’ll want me to be with him to find out what he’s up to. When they turn up, will you tell ’em I’m away on a military survey with him . . . only you don’t know where. I won’t give any flight details out tomorrow till I get out of the area.’ Jeremy agreed.

  However, over breakfast next morning, Jeremy delegated Nanago to deliver that message, because he would be going South with Fergus.

  Fergus raised a little cheer. Nan smiled her sweet fat smile, saying ‘Dat’s good you go.’

  ‘Why . . . you want to get rid of me?’

  ‘No . . . I want see you come back de properly Jeremy.’

  ‘Is there such a person?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Fergus.

  II

  They flew some fifteen hundred miles the first day; over the great grey inland seabed, miscalled The Downs, where the sea had sunk into great cracks to form the world’s vastest prairie of sweet grasses so that Lord Alfred Vaisey and some others like him might run their kine there to grow fat and make them richer; over the great inland river systems, at this time of year only narrow lines of darker green of coolibah and water-gum against limitless grey-green of mulga, only a flash of water here and there, where in season it would stretch for miles, rushing from a thousand miles away to revive the grasses that fat the beasts that fatted Lord Vaisey and the other absentee landlords of this land that Jack the pioneer stole from those who’d thought they owned it; over the homesteads built by Jack with a gun in one hand, only to be sold for a song to Their Lordships while now Jack held in that other hand a bottle; over the little towns that had grown up in the tradition of the never-to-be forgotten Homeland each as a sort of tenantry to the Manor, little one-pub affairs, the pub the centre of culture, or social gravity, about it clustered half a dozen iron shops and sheds, from it diverging dusty crossroads leading to meaner and meaner shacks till nought left but the dog kennels of the dispossessed owners.

  Fergus, mocking at these first sights of civilisation, was surprised to hear Jeremy say, ‘The
se little townships have the virtue at least of being original. You’ll see nothing like them anywhere else in the world. Overseas, I used to yearn for them. Walking country lanes and fields, I’d round a bend or come over a hill, to be surprised to see the spired church, the shingled inn, the thatched cottages, instead of the old familiar scene. I suppose you’ve got to be born to it to find any charm in it. Still, the pioneers had a way of working even with stringybark and saplings. If only they could have gone on making truly Australian-looking things like that with better materials and taste, instead of the Hollywood abominations that are springing up in the new places, like Mount Isa and Alice Springs.’

  In late afternoon they dropped down to spend the night at such a one-pub town that stood beside a salt lake, its salinity declared by the lack of growth around it and its crystalline shores that turned from silver to vermilion as they descended.

  The salt lake was of primary importance to the town, so they learnt from those they found in the bar of the pub and with whom they drank till bedtime. It was not so much its saline waters, which only the goats and dingoes drank, the rest of the population living off tank-water or what the Council hauled from Five Mile Creek in dry weather — and beer. Rather, beer should have had priority, because the value of the lake was its effect on the atmosphere, which put such a fine edge on a thirst for beer that far more was consumed here per head than anywhere else in Australia. The publican had the exact statistics, running into decimals. It was this that brought the drovers, fencers, shearers, doggers, ’roo-shooters, ringers, well-sinkers, and all the rest of rural workers and loafers, to take a spell there, hence literally was the settlement’s means of subsistence. The only trouble was that the regular citizens themselves were similarly affected, so that all profit from the boon went down their gullets also, for which reason liberal strangers were always more than welcome, like this pair o’ flyin’ gents. What was it they said their business was, again?

  Thus did what is called the Bullshit, chief delight of most Australian males, get started, and the evening made a complete social success. The pair made their full contribution. In answer to the sly inquiries regarding their business, they declared that they were representatives of the great brewing monopoly, Carlton United, which had heard of the fabulous atmosphere of the town and wanted samples of the lake waters so as to be able to synthesise the contents and, in accordance with their concern for the Nation, establish lakes of the kind throughout it. This so tickled the mob as to check the resentment that otherwise must have met their dodging accounting for themselves. Jeremy quickly advanced the good feeling by answering the usual question as to whether the Catholic Church owned CUB by saying, ‘Sure! And every brew’s blessed personally by the Apostolic Delegate. Ask my mate, here. He has to sometimes fly the old boy in from his favourite convent when he’s behind time and they want a brew out in a hurry. A blessing in every bottle, you might say.’

  Fergus was surprised to find Jeremy so accomplished a Bullshit Artist, and tackled him on the matter when they retired to their little iron box of a bedroom. ‘A serious man like you,’ he protested, somewhat boozily but with the rationality of developed intelligence that succumbs only when clean bowled. ‘Mob o’ bloody morons, really . . . ev’thing you don’t like in ’Stralian character in ’em . . . mean bastards, ev’ one of ’em. Yet you really enjoyed that Bullshit session, didn’t you!’

  Jeremy answered, ‘I always do. I wouldn’t go on the booze . . . but for the company, and the fun . . . and that’s it . . . the Bullshit. That’s the actual catharsis of drinking for me . . . not just getting rotten. I think it’s the same with most bushmen. They certainly finish up in the gutter, or in the goat-shed, or on the police-chain . . . but it’s the company . . . the old Australian mateship.’

  ‘Yes . . . but a solitary like you . . . the ol’ Scrub Bull? You’re an idealist, driven into himself for the lack of anything approaching idea . . . idealism . . . around him.’

  ‘A solitary wanting identification with his fellows, eh? Sure, I hate ’em for their stupidity, dishonesty, laziness, or whatever it is makes the average Australian what he is. But I want to love ’em, too . . . my countrymen, my comrades. The Bullshit with Booze maybe’s the only way to conjure up that ideal of ours, the mateship. Confession of failure, I s’pose you might call it. But, well . . . when I get into a session I always feel it’s a form of realism . . . not just an escape from harsh reality, in boozy sentimentality as you find the English do, or cock-sureness as you do the Yanks, or sheer brutality as you do so many others . . . but rather a game you actually face the facts of your existence in, and make fun of ’em. What do you think?’

  But Fergus, having lain down, and having had a hard day behind him, could only mumble sleepily. Jeremy shut up, set about undressing, by the light of Igulgul peeping over the goat-yard was soon asleep himself.

  Next morning Fergus had to do some telephoning to prepare for their flight. As soon as it was done, they were off, to beat up the appreciative town in farewell, and away.

  Now they were to see civilisation as larger and larger infestations of the innocent dreaming landscape. Bigger and bigger townships pocked the plains, abscessed the woodlands, carbuncled the hills, binding themselves to the host they’d settled on with an increasingly intricate system for sharing their sucking of its substance: roads, railways, waterways that mocked the meandering old rivers with their engineer’s geometry. Then suddenly, soon after noon, as they came out of that almost-still-pristine back-drop to it, the Blue Mountains, and overcame the dazzle of the five thousand miles of blue Pacific beyond, there was the very centre of the rash, the focal point, stretching to the sea and North and South as far as eye could see even at five thousand feet — Sydney. As they dropped down to it with whispering engines, Jeremy remarked, ‘Looks like a huge cemetery from here, doesn’t it!’

  ‘You’re dead right,’ said Fergus. ‘No pun intended. I’ve often wondered what it reminded me of looking at it from on top.’

  ‘Graveyard of our hopes, eh?’

  ‘What hopes?’

  ‘That the Australian community will be anything much better than it started as . . . the sweepings of the gutters of London.’

  ‘Eh? Is that the spirit to start the crusade to nationhood in?’

  ‘Where’d you get this crusade idea. I’m coming to take a look-see.’

  ‘Alfie Candlemas’s words.’ After a moment Fergus added, ‘Have to tell you . . . I was talking to Alfie on the phone this morning. She’ll be waiting to take charge of you.’

  Jeremy reddened, muttered, ‘For crissake!’

  ‘Sorry . . . but I’ve got to get on the move again as soon as I set you down. Got to get to Whiskers and his protection. Otherwise the Duns down here will be onto me. And I can’t just leave you to find your own way about. Someone’d sell you the Harbour Bridge within an hour.’

  ‘D’you think I’m that bushy?’

  ‘It’s meant as a compliment . . . but you look the typical bushman. Anyway, it’s a long while since you’ve been here . . . and I happen to have been born here, and know the style of the inhabitants. But what’ve you got to worry about? Nobody can handle little Alfie better than you.’

  Down over rusty roofs, acres of dumped rubbish, blocks of belching smokestacks, tangles of roads with motor vehicles streaming like meatant runs to a carcass . . . down . . . down . . . down . . . to the good earth, to almost exactly the spot where the first whiteman trod it some one hundred and seventy years before and since had for the most part trodden it out of recognition. They swung from the runway to the apron. There was Alfie, in her impatience, or whatever it was, evidently having weedled her way through the barricade, all trim and citified in autumn brown with pretty little face glowing like a ripening fruit, coming running to meet them.

  Alfie flung herself on Jeremy as if their last lamentable experiences together might never have happened, kissed him on the mouth with such frank sensuality as to make him burn, and releasing him
with lips, gripped him with arms, crying on his breast, ‘Oh, oh . . . it’s so good to have you again!’

  Fergus, with a wink and a split-lip grin, took himself off to official business. Alfie whisked Jeremy away to her car.

  Alfie was showing off, no doubt, the way she handled the car in what to Jeremy would be a snarl of traffic, but which she said was nothing to what it could be. She laughed at his obvious fearfulness, taking shining black eyes off what she should have been watching to look at him, a hand off the wheel to caress his tight-drawn arm. Thus into and through the heart of the city, while she gabbled of all sorts of things, from Lily Lagoons to Langham Court (the latter the exclusive block of flats beside the Harbour where she had arranged his accommodation), from Monsignor Maryzic to Mussolini, for both of whom she expressed admiration. Evidently she knew a lot about how things were Up Top, as she called it, spoke of Prindy, Nan, and others — but never of Rifkah. Jeremy seemed too much preoccupied with the hazards of their journey to be listening more than to answer in monosyllables.

  Then there, miraculously, they were at Langham Court. The flat was on the ground floor, if such it could be called, when descent had to be made to it from street level. It was practically on the water’s edge, with only a strip of lawn and a sea-wall intervening, deliberately chosen for the perpetual warmth of the water, she said. ‘You’re going to find it cold. The westerlies’ve started. We can’t have you getting sick or running away because of the rotten climate. You’ll be able to keep fit. There’s a little park just round the corner where you can run. I’ll show you when I take you home. Everything for dear Jeremy . . . even brandy. Let’s have a nip to warm the house, eh?’

  They had three before she left him so that he might bath and change and rest in preparation for her coming to take him to dinner with her and Frank, her husband. Now her chatter was of Free Australia and all there was for him to do for it. She didn’t seem to mind his silence, kissed him, laughing gaily in his blank face.