Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Jeremy said he had promised Monsignor Maryzic to have Prindy in Port Palmeston for his First Communion next Sunday, and intended going himself, along with Rifkah, and then delivering all back at the Mission.

  Esk said, ‘I know, old man. We’ll all go together. If I get the set down tomorrow, as I hope, we can start our survey at once. Fergus will drop in for me at Beatrice Station. I’d like to proceed straight out to your place.’

  ‘Just as you like . . . Sir.’

  ‘That’ll do, Jeremy. There’s going to be no rank between us at any time. I’ve told no one about your appointment. Have you?’

  ‘No . . . Mark. I’d rather it just leak out . . . if it has to. It mightn’t come to anything at all.’

  ‘What d’you mean by that, old boy?’

  ‘Well . . . already they’re calling it on the radio Twilight War, Phoney War. It may be no more than an adjustment between Hitler and Stalin, and token on the British side. Could fizzle out.’

  ‘Nothing as complicated as this can fizzle out, Jeremy.’

  ‘Maybe . . . but nothing so alienly complicated can involve me, Mark. I’m in this purely for the defence of my country, you know.’

  Esk nodded, putting an arm about Jeremy’s shoulder and patting the other, saying, ‘I know, dear boy. Well . . . cheery-o, I hope, only till tomorrow.’

  III

  Things turned out as General Esk said he hoped they would: which is to say that Fergus, bringing the military radio for installation at Lily Lagoons and the military man to do the job, picked Whiskers up at Beatrice Station the day after the Race Meeting wound up, and brought him across to the Lagoons homestead. It also turned out that more than Whiskers’s hope was involved. Within twenty-four hours of the arrival of the aircraft, by which time it had gone again on that tour of inspection planned for himself and Jeremy, Rifkah was saying that the soldier there to install the radio, one Signals Sergeant Sims, had come in answer to her prayers.

  Sergeant Sims, a fleshy gingerish man, no more than twenty-five but well on the way to baldness it was revealed when not wearing his badged slouched hat, was not introduced to the household, nor really into it. Ignoring everyone, he gave himself immediately to his task, proceeding to the annexe when told that’s where the radio-room was, not simply to work, but also to eat and sleep there; until, at least, his military superiors were gone. It was his attitude to military superiority, in this case General Esk, Major Maltravers and newly promoted Captain Dickey, that was responsible for his complete withdrawal. This was known from the start, explained by the General to Jeremy when the Sergeant brusquely declined full hosiptality of the house. Whiskers said briefly, ‘He’s got this Australian thing about rank rather badly.’

  Relieved of This Thing by departure of the cause of it, Sergeant Sims showed himself to be anything but the stiff-neck he first appeared to be. When Nanago made the same offer as Jeremy, he accepted with alacrity, and entering the Big House for his first meal there, introduced himself to the assembled company — Rifkah, Prindy, Savitra — in military style: ‘Sigs Sarge Sims,’ adding, ‘Better known as Dim-sim, Zig-zag-zim, or just plain Sarge . . . take your pick.’ They laughed. After that he made them laugh a lot. He himself was always either laughing, singing, or talk-talk-talking. When they showed they were puzzled by the change in him, he explained his attitude to rank: ‘First thing you learn in the army is your place. An officer’s an officer . . . an OR an OR.’ Asked what OR meant, he replied, ‘Other Ranks, according to the book . . . but in the minds of officers, “’Orrible riff-raff . . . hohoho!”’

  Sims was well spoken and knowledgeable in many ways, in particular in those of his calling. He wasn’t simply a military signaller, but a trained electrician. On learning of Prindy’s interest in electrical phenomena, he took him under his wing, made him his assistant in setting up the new radio. It was when, during his first evening in the lounge in the Big House, he was asked by Rifkah if he knew anything about the showing of moving pictures and he replied, ‘Just about everything. You might say I cut my teeth on movie films,’ that he was declared the answer to a prayer. Thereupon he began to call himself, The Answer to the Maiden’s Prayer, a name he used often and with evident pleasure.

  Obviously he was smitten by Rifkah. However, it was not simply to impress her that he claimed to know everything about cinematography. With evident truthfulness he told of how his family were in the moving picture business in a small way, engaged in the itinerant form of it called Country Circuits. He said he’d got to know the faces of the filmstars of his childhood before that of his old man. He proved this my mimicking Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino and others, to the delight of his audience. When he heard what it was Rifkah wanted, he declared that it was as good as got. The first thing he would do when he got the radio going, which he expected to do experimentally by next day, he would call Sigs Sarge Solomon, a mate of his at Sigs HQ (and, as he put it to Rifkah, ‘One of your mob’), and get the ball rolling. He knew people in the motion-picture equipment trade. Such out-of-date gear as Rifkah wanted could be had practically for the asking. The biggest expense would be the cost of freighting. They might as well arrange to have it sent by mail plane so as to get it while he was still about to set it up for her. Part of his duty while here in the North, he said, would be to inspect the radios at the Mission stations, all now under military authority.

  Sims and Rifkah talked of little else but the movie outfit. She didn’t give him a chance to do otherwise, never letting him get her alone. His amorousness, expressed in singing love-songs at her, in rarely looking anywhere with those pale blue eyes save at her, was only too plain. To make it plainer still, he talked about it to Prindy while they worked on the radio: ‘Never saw anyone as beautiful . . . or so nice in every way. My family’s strict Catholic and’d throw fits over me wanting to marry a Jewess. But blow ’em. Anyway, you never know, living out on the Mission there, and you a Catholic, she might convert. Put in a plod for me, mate. I’ll take you, too, as my son. After the war we’ll start an electrical contracting business in Port Palmeston. Good opening there, I reckon. I’d apprentice you. Tell her that . . . and for chrissake, mate, make yourself scarce tonight, so’s I can get her alone to put in a moan for myself.’

  Prindy reported all this to Rifkah. She only giggled, and saw to it that if Prindy made himself scarce as requested, Savitra took his place as gooseberry.

  Despite the discouragement, Dim-sims, Zig-zag-zim, or The Answer to the Maiden’s Prayer, never appeared downcast, and just as eagerly talked of Rifkah’s picture show. He had an ingenious scheme for making the outfit the simple portable thing she wanted. He said, ‘You’ve got to have good light for good projection. But lumen requirement is proportional to distance of projection and screen area. You need project only a few yards onto a bit of a sheet. I’ve seen small projectors, like churches use for showing religious films, fitted with ordinary incandescent globes. Course they used to use the magic-lantern . . . slides with an oil-lamp. It’s reflexion that counts. But you don’t want to be carting round kerosene in the bush. You want electricity, and without batteries or any generating power but hand. I once saw a travelling preacher with a projector with a ten-watt dynamo geared to the crank. Took a bit of turning. But I reckon, that with a good reflector you could do it with five watts . . . which is what those little bike dynamos give. All you need’s a bit of a bike and someone in your audience to crank for you. Soon’s we get to Port Palmeston I’ll have a rake round the bike shops.’

  This happy state of things lasted four full days. It ceased suddenly on the Friday afternoon, with return of those snakes in this soldier’s arcady, the officers. By then The Answer to the Maiden’s Prayer was so enamoured of the maid that he was telling her himself what an asset her natural Jewish astuteness would be to that business he was going to start in Town and how he would like to leave his Sigs Sergeant’s pay, along with a dependant’s allotment meantime and how, in fact, he might overcome his prejudices
in the matter and try for a commission. Yet, even the savour of her fried fish in his soul and anticipation of eating it by the light of Sabbath candles, could not overcome that Thing he had about rank, which immediately drove him back into seclusion in the annexe. When Rifkah came, along with Prindy, to ask him to join them at her ‘leedle Shabbos’, for the first time he sounded other than the cheerful soul they’d known, grunting, ‘Eat with a General? It’d choke me!’

  Next morning, after breakfast in solitude, Sergeant Sims marched himself across to the Big House, and in military hob-nails bashed to attention in the front doorway of the lounge, barking at those within, while looking at no one, ‘Sigs Sarge Sims reporting!’

  The lounge was lively with preparations for the departure for Town. Luggage was being stacked ready for taking to the air-strip. Everybody looked at him in surprise. He stood like a guardsman on parade. General Esk broke the silence, saying amiably, ‘Good morning, Sergeant . . . all present and correct, I take it?’

  Still without meeting an eye, Sims barked, ‘Previous orders carried out. Further orders?’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant. We’ll be leaving in an hour or so. If you’ll be good enough to pack your kit . . .’

  ‘Sir!’ Sims about-turned himself with crashing boots, marched off.

  Esk shook his head. ‘This Australian attitude to rank never ceases to amaze me.’

  Jeremy said, ‘As I’ve told you . . . the easy-going Anzac is a fiction. This Thing, as you call it, is a complex. It’s all the same, whether expressed the way you’ve complained of with the Garrison people, all rushing round saluting you, sycophantly . . . or cheekily, like Pat Hannaford, or embarrassed, as in the case of Clancy . . . or veiled hostility, like this man . . . it expresses only one thing . . . a deep feeling of inferiority mingled with resentment.’

  Esk sighed. ‘Thank heavens I’ve got you to deal with it.’

  ‘Me? I’m all the types rolled into one.’

  ‘All the better, dear boy.’ Esk patter Jeremy’s shoulder. ‘Well . . . I expect we’d better be marching.’ He turned to clasp Nanago’s hand. ‘Au revoir, dear lady. Hope it’s not long before I shall be seeing you again. Meantime, God Bless!’

  Sergeant Sims literally marched himself to the air-strip. When his superiors turned up later in the utility and truck, he lined himself up as if to give the General Salute. However, the General took no notice of him. Still he stood with military propriety, At Ease, kit at his feet, awaiting embarkation orders. Perhaps it was only because none of his superiors bothered about him; but his regimental attitude collapsed on the instant when Rifkah called him to come. He fairly leapt out of the military strait-jacket, snatched up his kit, came running. She told him they would sit together.

  That was The Answer to the Maiden’s Prayer’s first chance to be alone with the maid. Virtually they were alone in the crowded cabin of the aircraft, since that is the way of individuals or pairs in flight, pocketed in space, as it were. He gave himself with vigour to what he called Putting in a Moan, telling her how much he liked her. She had to lean to hear above the roaring engines, whereupon she would lean away again, to look out of the window, and maybe to direct his attention to something more important: a mob of brumbies, a herd of buffaloes, a flight of ducks or cockatoos.

  For most of the flight they were in the hands of that young master of so many arts, Prindy, who although directed by Fergus, most likely was following the Shade flitting over hill and gully just ahead of them. The Shade left them when, on arrival at Palmeston Airport, they turned over Blue Mud Bay Jail to go in to land, seeming itself to dart into the jail.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Chivvy was waiting with a staff-car and a stiff salute for the General and a stiff bow to Jeremy that hinted he must know something of what lay below the civilian clothes. He would have taken General and Colonel with him, only Jeremy declined. Esk and his aides went off with him. For Sergeant Sims there was a utility truck driven by a soldier of equal rank. Zig-zag himself clung to Rifkah as long as possible, assuring her that he would get after those bits of bikes at the earliest opportunity, and asking with a last gasp as she got into the taxi with Jeremy, Prindy, and Savitra, if he might take her to the pictures tonight. With a smile she assented.

  In the taxi they went first to the Catholic Church, to drop Savitra at the convent into the care of the Mother Superior, who smiled very sweetly at Rifkah, then to Mission House, to give Prindy into the outstretched hands of Monsignor Maryzic. Rifkah took Prindy back for a moment from His Very Reverence, to draw him to her breast and droop her head over his head while smoothing his back, as Aboriginal women do in parting with young sons. The old priest watched cloosely, as if seeking significance in it — this Jewess handing her son over to Edom and doing it like a black gin!

  Jeremy and Rifkah left Prindy, saying they would see him in Church tomorrow.

  A Jewess and an Atheist in Church tomorrow to see one almost as notorious for outlawry as Ned Kelly and past-prentice to a Witch-doctor take his First Communion? ‘Would the roof fall in’, as the common herd would say?

  Jeremy and Rifkah went on round to book in at the Queen Victoria Hotel. Mrs Morgan, the proprietress, soon stopped the bawdy whispers it started in the bars: ‘A gentleman like Jeremy Delacy and a nice sweet girl like that? A double room, indeed! And as if I’d have such goings on in my house!’

  IV

  On Sunday morning the Catholic Church was packed for First Communion Mass. It always was so on such occasions, but more so on this because the Bishop was new. Quite glorious the Bishop was to look upon, robed in ivory and silver with a touch of scarlet, with the gems in his mitre sparkling in the blaze of altar candles like the Stars in the Crowns of the Saints about the Throne of Thrones, the ruby of his office glowing like Faith itself as with lace-cuffed exquisite hands he ministered with pious grace fit for display before the Throne itself — Gloria in Excelsis! — yet he was not the centre of general interest!

  What caught and held the interest of the congregation at large was surely the most incongruous group of participants in a Holy Mass imaginable. They were divided between the front pew and the Communion Rail immediately opposite. Small wonder Monsignor Maryzic and Reverend Mother Mathias were flanking them! Why? Never out of tolerance of such, but in readiness to deal with any Old-Nickism, for sure. Those in the pew were Delacy the Scrub Bull, Red Rifkah his fancy Jew-girl, and (Mother of God!) that meanest atheist this side of Hell’s Gate, Fay McFee. Those at the rail were as sure a brace of Imps of Hades as ever slipped into human hide. It was not white hide, of course. How different they looked from the sweetly pallid innocents kneeling on either side of them. The Creamy Delacy Kid — or was it Cahoon? — and one of those young chocolate whores of Ali Barba’s (Pray for us!).

  The whispers flew from pew to pew. Pious eyes were raised to the roof (now and in the hour of death, Amen!). Perhaps the old tin roof really would have fallen in, had the Cahoon Sisters, beginning to raise their first whispers of astonishment to squeaks of protest that must crescendo to shrieks of fury, not been gently but firmly ushered out by sidesmen and taken to the Convent.

  New as the Bishop was, he would not know about the doubtful things behind those intense grey eyes in the golden face into which he looked as he laid the jewelled hand in blessing on the golden head, as he placed the Host on the rosy tip of tongue, murmuring, Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodial animam tuam in vitam aeternam . . . Amen.

  Kyrie eleison.

  The Voice of God, unutterably sweet, sobbing to Kitty Wyndeyer’s manipulation.

  Christe eleison.

  Angel voices ringing in the roof.

  Kyrie eleison.

  God’s Voice now thundering till the roof-tree shook.

  The Bishop’s voice rose like that of a sacrifical bull, quavering: Pater Noster!

  Oh, how the grey eyes stared, the golden ears strained — to catch the magic of it all?

  Afterwards there was Communion Breakfast in the Church Hall. Then foll
owed a picnic to the ocean beach at East Point. The Point itself was now out of bounds, since mounted with big guns. Prindy was in it all, with his people. They delivered him back to Monsignor Maryzic at sundown. He was to assist the Monsignor at Vespers, to be conducted tonight in the presence of the Bishop watching from the Throne. Prindy was given the honour of helping with His Lordship’s disrobement. Would it be disenchanting to find pants and braces and pot-gut under all that glory? But perhaps true magicians are realists, knowing that the trappings are only for the mob, that the true koornung is the Force beneath the ochre. At any rate, when asked by His Lordship if it were so that he intended to become a priest, Prindy answered promptly, ‘Yas, My Lord.’ For that he got a special inscription put in the brand-new gilt-edged Missal bought him as First Communion present by his mother, Red Rifkah, and a special Blessing in parting: Deus Vobiscum!

  Prindy was blessed again, as well as kissed, as, tired out, he was put to bed in his netted stretcher on the Mission House verandah by Monsignor Maryzic.

  It was an hour or so later, when the Monsignor, reading in his own bed inside, was startled by a sound outside: faint crying it seemed. Then, realising what it was, the old priest smiled. That sweet strained singing in sleep. Soon the self-immolating words and the wild sacrificial notes could be made out: Kyrie eleison . . . Kyrie eleison . . . Christe eleison . . .