Cootes, quite red now, bit his pretty lip. Jeremy came to his rescue: ‘No matter. As you’ve enjoyed the hospitality of the house yourself, I’m sure you won’t forget us away somewhere waiting to come back.’
Cootes replied with haste, ‘No . . . of course not. This bloody war. Thrown us all out of balance.’
Jeremy nodded. ‘C’est la guerre, as you’ve said before. The French used to say it a lot during the Last Turn-out . . . even as an excuse for their women giving our men the pox.’
The dark eyes grew round with suspicion again. But Jeremy stopped it by saying, ‘Having some more beer. By the way . . . I’ve left you a couple of dozen bottles in the cellar under the kitchen floor. And speaking of the kitchen . . . I haven’t any staff now . . . Fergus and I have been batching.’
‘That’s all right. Sims and I have our batmen. But what’s this about Ferris? He was told he couldn’t fly here.’
‘He isn’t flying. He disposed of his aircraft. He’s travelling South with me by road.’
‘What’d he do with his aircraft?’
‘I think you’d better discuss that with him yourself. He’s over in the annexe. You’ll find him friendly enough. We’ve all had time to adjust ourselves. If you like to go over now, I’ll show your men the ropes of the kitchen and upstairs. I’ve got a couple of rooms locked up. Hope you won’t mind. Some valuable things. I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll see there’s no wanton busting in. Soldiers can do silly things . . .’
‘Not mine, Jeremy. I’ve got a very special team.’
‘Well, that’s comforting to know. See you for another beer before lunch, then, eh?’
At lunch Jeremy presided, at Cootes’s insistence. However, that the new master was already in command was made evident by his vetoing Jeremy’s idea of having everybody sit down to the meal as he’d had them in for that drink. The Coot said, ‘This is to be my Mess. Good order and military discipline should be observed from the outset. The men know their places . . . and prefer to keep them. They’ll eat in the kitchen.’ Thus there were only Jeremy, Fergus, Sigs-Lieut Sims, and he who before long would have the power to keep other men waiting on his entry here and the glory of being able to raise his glass to that Silly Billy Face which surely would hang here, as in every other Officers’ Mess throughout this Commonwealth, perhaps in the very place where, as a last despairing gesture to the Commonwealth that might have been, had so briefly hung that secret starry symbol of it, Rifkah’s flag. Cootes asked after Rifkah, saying he’d been informed that Fergus had flown her over here, while the rest of the Mission people had gone by boat to Palmeston. Jeremy said that by now she would be down the Centre with his family, or perhaps gone on still further South.
Cootes wasn’t left to concentrate on the doings of Rifkah. Fergus got him onto the much more interesting subject of his Unit; or as he called it sometimes, My Team, My Mob, My Men, My Boys. It seemed that out of his Intelligence Corps he intended to form a Commando unit, by which he meant a true guerilla band such as the Boers had had in South Africa and no one had had since, those units of the British Army called Commandos being mere hit-and-run saboteurs, according to him. His men would hold their ground if they wanted to, independent of the battle ebb and flow of either friend or enemy. His men would be mounted to fight in the only way truly effective in this country, on horseback. Let the enemy bring in his tanks, his trucks, his sneaking bicycle-riders. Nothing they had would be worth tuppence against the sudden unpredictable onslaughts of his bushmen-horsemen. No arms manuals for them. A sniper’s rifle each and a few machine-guns would constitute their armour; unless you counted gelignite for booby-traps and cyanide for waterholes and common or garden matches for setting fire to the grass on the plains, and the scrub on the hills, after luring the enemy into such places. They’d finally round ’em up and yard ’em like cattle. Whole divisions of troops not familiar with country like this could be held by his mere four companies. Let the Nip land and make his bases. They would only serve as sitting shots for the Air Force later on. One thing was certain: with his men to deal with, they would never penetrate more than a score of miles, and then wish they hadn’t.
Asked by Jeremy if he were recruiting his men from the locality, this brave defender of the land made a Napoleonic moue with that pretty mouth, then said, ‘You know yourself that the so-called bushmen of this country have always relied on the blacks. Deny ’em their black guides and they’re buggered. And who’s going to rely on blacks that have had far closer contact with Japs than with whitemen? No . . . I’m getting my men from the wild parts down South . . . Snowy River Country, Gippsland . . . even Tasmania. These are real bushmen. In fact I’ve got ’em . . . all in camp down South now. It’s only a matter of getting the transport to bring ’em here. We’re expecting a shipment of our own brand-new four-wheel-drive type MT any day.’
‘Thought you were only going to use horses?’ Fergus murmured.
‘Horses in the line of battle. MT of our own to make us completely independent in the matter of supplies. MT will be based here. This will be my Rear HQ. By the way, Jeremy . . . what horses have you got available?’
Jeremy said he was sorry, that as his were all blood-stock, the first thing he had done was to see to getting them out of the zone. ‘Pity,’ said the Coot. ‘I was rather looking forward to having Red Rory as my own charger . . . great horse, that. Still . . . I guess I’ll be able to get what I want from your son Martin.’
During the afternoon, when Jeremy and Fergus were able to exchange a word or two in private, they recalled that bit of bushmanship of the Coot’s following the Pigeon Corroboree. Evidently the bravo himself had quite forgotten it. Fergus explained how easily he had taken Cootes in by telling him he’d handed the Junkers over to the Air Force. He said, ‘Such a deep bastard in many ways . . . and yet such a simpleton in others. Imagine what his Commandos are going to be like! Any man worth tuppence out of those places he’s talking about has been recruited long ago. If he gets any, they’ll be jackeroos and cooks. But most likely what he’ll get’s a bunch of poofters whose only riding’s been one another in the Sydney Domain and Hyde Park.’
‘Yes . . . I can hardly see him getting bushmen to follow him. I must get a bit of a talk with him to see whether what he intends to do might clash with my own intentions . . . and to see what makes him tick. I consider him a classical case in that difference between people we’ve been talking about.’
That night Jeremy was able to get Cootes to himself while the others, according to their respective castes, amused themselves, with games Jeremy fished out of cupboards for them. Fergus played checkers with Sims. Jeremy introduced the Coot to brandy, well-diluted with a gingerish cordial of his own making for consumption largely by his blacks. The Coot was delighted. ‘Ah, that’s my drink!’ he cried. Jeremy told him there were flagons of it in the cellar.
Under the glowing influence of the drink and Jeremy’s shrewd questioning, Cootes told much of his history, evidently with a fair degree of truth, as might be expected of one who saw his destiny all but fulfilled and as star-shiny as he had dreamt it as a child. He was convinced he would die in battle. But this was to be no tragedy, even if his voice quavered and cheeks quivered in declaring it, because his eyes shone with the glory of it: ‘It’s what I foresaw as a little boy playing with my tin soldiers . . . dying at the head of a regiment of my own men, at the moment of victory. My old Granny, who brought me up, you know, foresaw it, too. The Little Corporal, she used to call me . . . Napoleon, you know. I think I mentioned she gave me a book on Napoleon’s life . . . such a huge advanced work for a kid of my age . . . but I fairly mopped it up . . . struggling with a dictionary at my elbow. What a pity dear old Gran didn’t live to call me Colonel! It’s a pity you couldn’t be with me, Jeremy. You’d make a good 2-I-C. Only, of course, it would be impossible, with that anti-militaristic kink you’ve developed through the death of your brother . . . a glorious death, actually, I understand.’
Jeremy re
sponded to that somewhat dryly: ‘You’ll have no crazy brother to get a kink over your own glorious death.’
The Coot missed the irony, sighed: ‘No . . . I leave no one.’
‘How come you’ve never married?’
Evidently the Coot had considered it — with academic ladies. But no female had ever meant much to him, excepting his Granny. He was bitter about his own mother, who had abandoned him to her own mother while his father was away in the Last Turn-out. He was vague about his father. Anyway, he wouldn’t have known much about him, since the man had never come back to claim him. As previously he had related, he’d tried to establish himself in a military career from youth, and had taken up Anthropology as an adventurous alternative. Not for him the sissy Grove of Academe, but a Man’s life in the wilderness, taming the Savage. Nevertheless, Jeremy pressed him as a Student of Man, since that’s what Anthropologist means. What was his opinion, he asked, of the anomaly of men’s being so different when possessed of so much in common, even blood brothers, say? The Coot answered airily, ‘Simply a matter of genes. One man is born better endowed than another.’
‘You mean just as there are the strong and the weak amongst animals?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But the endowments of a man are so much more complex. A man who’s physically a runt . . .’ the Coot blinked over that, ‘. . . may be a giant intellectually . . . and vice versa.’
‘Your vice versa chappy could be a moron.’
‘He could also be quite intelligent in many ways . . . yet stupid in others.’
‘One uses one’s intelligence in accordance with the urges of one’s genes.’
‘Don’t you believe in education, then?’
‘Of course . . . but only of those capable of the full benefit of it.’
‘How do you select them?’
‘That’s the educationalist’s job . . . the result of his urge to educate . . . eeeeeee!’
‘But we all have something of a didactic urge. Couldn’t the wrong types seize power in this way . . . having it merely accepted that they were educationalists, or any other specialists in dealing with their fellows, by nature?’
‘Wrong types don’t last. Take the wrong type of man who shoves himself in front of an army for the power of it. What happens? Débâcle!’
Jeremy didn’t go into that. This gave the Coot the chance to put aside the boring questioning of an amateur philosopher, one whose academic achievements amounted to licenciateship as druggist and horse-doctor, and swing the talk to war — war — war! The word made his eyes shine to begin with. But after a while he got maudlin over his impending death. When his eyes glazed, Jeremy tactfully left him.
Jeremy went outside. Igulgul, a couple of days off full, was high in the sky, taking broad glimpses through masses of cloud drifting southward. He went across the yard, heading for the mangoes. He passed through the grove. Who would be eating the fruit next season? Perhaps it would be left largely to the flying foxes, since Southerners mostly had English habits in the way of fruit-eating, as in anything. That might cause the new masters to cut the old trees down, to obviate what they considered the nuisance of the seasonal nocturnal rioting of the bats, which to a Northerner was only proof of the season’s bounty. Not infrequently Southerners did that when they came North. Lily Lagoons without its mangoes! Igulgul looked down through the trees and winked.
Jeremy glanced at the lightless Aboriginal quarters as he passed. The desertedness could be felt. He was standing staring, when he heard soft scufflings. Creatures that would have been hanging around their human brethren in refuge came to seek a touch from him. Some followed him to the horse-paddock, where others, now without fear of being bullied by jealous equines, attached themselves to him. He crossed to the creek on the western side, with a small crowd shuffling and snuffling and squeaking and croaking around him. Did they know the Mullaka was about to leave them and were gathered to say Mummuk?
He stopped beside a shiny hole, went down to drink. Some of the creatures went down with him, one a brush-tail who’d had his marvellous agility torn off him with half a haunch and most of his tail by dingoes. Jeremy sat down beside the pool, sighed, murmured, ‘The sweetest waters in all the world, the waters of home.’ The wallaby nuzzled him who had patched it up to continue a half-life. He fondled it, continuing his sighing and his murmuring, ‘Where else are creatures for ever being driven from their home waters as we are?’ A few creatures settled down around him, others went off to forage or play in the moonlight. Igulgul peeped down through the paperbarks and the leichhardts, while his Shade glared up from the water. ‘Will all this quiet loveliness be laid waste to satisfy the kuttabah’s insatiable technology, which is really only a craze for artificiality, a hatred of what is natural because Nature makes him feel too small? Will it become a desert place, exhausted of everything that can be made use of . . . or a site for an equally sterile modern settlement.’
He continued his musing to his silent listeners: ‘I feel deeply guilty about you, my friends. What have I done to you, in my whiteman’s arrogance and ignorance of Nature? Now that I have to abandon you, do I make your misery greater for having postponed it? I leave you confined here, perhaps at the mercy of louts of my kind who’ll even make a sport of torturing you . . . while to open the fence for you will only be to let your natural enemies in. Should I’ve left you to your true patron, Nature, to give you the coup de grâce? You won’t have to charge me with your agony, when it comes. I’ll be charging myself, thinking of you . . . as of all the others . . . sweet Nan, gentle Darcy, the poor old blacks . . . all, like you, victims of dependence on one too weak to support them ultimately. But what would real strength be in the circumstances . . . to have given you all the coup de grâce, and when condemned for it, put the blame on those who condemned me . . . or give you all the chance of fulfilment by a miracle? Is that what I’m expecting for myself . . . a miracle?’
So musing for a couple of hours. He fell asleep at it. The creatures drifted away. Igulgul watched him as he went down through the trees. He was wakened by the Moon’s hard staring. He rose, drank again, headed back towards the homestead, this time by way of the orchard and kitchen garden. Only one light to be seen at the homestead now, that in the little power-house, where the heart of the place still throbbed as usual: Home-ahome-ahome-home-home!
As he came through the orchard, flying foxes swept up from gorging on pawpaws and bananas that normally would not have been left for them. Futile guilt. Jeremy sighed, as if affected by the futility of everything. He paused in the kitchen garden, to sit for a little on the steel garden-seat he had made and which was polished from Nanago’s sitting there often, as she said, ‘To watch him Chinee cabbage grow.’ How these Chinese cabbages did grow, under her loving care! Now they would grow to seed. The sugar ants would steal the seeds, the white ants eat the roots. The alien weeds that had lurked waiting ever since the ravishment of the mining days would pop out again in full vigour. Goodbye, Nan’s garden! He rose.
Igulgul was down, the West aglow. The Big House stood black against it. He did not head that way, but towards the harness-shed, that long established shelter here for unwanted ones. Where else to go? The New Master had said he would be using the Big House for his officers, the annexe for his WO’s and sergeants, the Aboriginal quarters for OR’s. The MP’s and batmen would be bedded down tonight in the annexe.
He stopped at the power-house, looked in. Throbbing green engine and humming dynamo gleamed spotless in the light of two bright lamps above the switchboard, on which meters told of the state of the spirit of this place: normal, although actually at the hour of death. He stood for a minute or so, staring as if in unbelief. Rarely was the plant ever stopped, because it kept the big refrigerator going. Suddenly he moved in, grasped the two main switches, opened them. The lights dulled. The heartbeat faltered, slowed. The dynamo whined. The engine gasped to a stop. Darkness — save for the golden glow without. Again he stood. Then with another swift mov
ement he reached for the board again, pulled the two main fuses. He was turning with them, going out — when he stopped. A moment. Then he went back, replaced the palely gleaming china things. Futility. Sigs-Lieut Sims was an electrician.
He went out, on to the harness-shed, into it. Already his swag lay unrolled on one of the hide harness racks. In the gathering darkness he stripped to underclothes, lay down.
Butcher birds were the alarm clocks here at dawn as well as the alarmists during the day. Jeremy had dozed off. He rose hastily, dressed, rolled his swag, shouldered it, went out. Through the mangoes. The Big House still bulked dark, but with windows of mother-o’-pearl. He went to the garage of the annexe, tossed the swag into the back of the already loaded utility. Then into the annexe, walking softly. Loud snores were to be heard in the little hospital. He went through to what had been his own bedroom. It was now occupied by Fergus, who woke easily to Jeremy’s touch, and rose. Jeremy went out again, to stand by the utility staring at the Big House as it came into everyday being with the growing light. Soon Fergus was there. Jeremy said to him, ‘You drive. She’s yours now. Let’s get going before anyone wakes. We’ll have breakfast at the Rainbow Pool.’
As they went through the gate he looked back, breathing, ‘Goodbye, dear home . . . goodbye, I fear, for ever.’
They drove on for a couple of miles in silence. Then suddenly Jeremy broke it, saying in a voice so unexpectedly lively that Fergus glanced quickly at first sound of it, ‘D’you know . . . Cootes has the mind of a child!’ He stared at Fergus, who had to look back at the road. After a moment Jeremy asked, ‘I wonder if that’s what’s wrong with humanity . . . that the majority of people never really grow up, never become anything more than children made vicious with experience?’
Fergus remarked: ‘There is a theory that the intellectual development of people stops at varying ages . . . like seven in the moron. The average age is supposed to be about sixteen.’
Poor Fellow My Country Page 224