by Judy Nunn
‘That’s it,’ Malcolm yelled; he was riding Fast Asleep. Both horses, fat and thirty years old, remained good natured and reliable. But Malcolm was a more experienced, and far more aggressive rider than Kit, so Fast had been raised to a sluggish trot.
‘That’s it! Kick him!’ Malcolm yelled.
Kit kicked for all he was worth. ‘Come on, Seldom,’ he cried, ‘Come on, boy.’
Seldom realised that he was expected to keep pace with Fast so he obliged, and both animals trotted lazily out of the yard by the stables and set off for the home paddock.
Henrietta and Terence watched from the front verandah. It was a Sunday, and the first time the boys had been out riding for any considerable distance on their own. They’d been told they could go as far as the home horse paddock, then they must turn around and come straight back. It was a test.
‘Shouldn’t we be with them,’ Henrietta had asked, ‘what if one of them has a fall?’
‘Then they’ll get back up again,’ Terence replied. ‘Besides, Malcolm won’t come off, he’s a good rider, that boy. And if Kit takes a fall and can’t get back up then Malcolm’ll come home and tell us.’ Henrietta looked aghast. ‘It’s only a few miles,’ he assured her, ‘and they have to learn to look after each other.’
It was another outback lesson, she realised. He’d already made a habit of setting tests for the boys. Malcolm met every one of the tests head on, but Kit didn’t. And it wasn’t just the age difference, Henrietta was sure. The boys were chalk and cheese. Malcolm was Terence and Kit was Paul, even in appearance. Malcolm had his father’s strong body. Kit, although quite tall for his age, was slight in frame. Malcolm had his father’s sandy hair and hazel-green eyes, Kit’s eyes were grey.
‘He has your eyes,’ several women had commented to Henrietta. But they were wrong. Kit’s eyes were Paul’s. He did indeed appear to have inherited her hair, a little darker in colour, almost auburn with deep reddish tinges. But then, Henrietta wondered, had Paul, before he’d turned grey, possibly been auburn-haired?
The differences between the two boys were so obvious to Henrietta that she had worried others might notice, particularly Aggie. But paradoxically it had been Aggie who had put her mind at rest.
‘Look at them,’ she’d said one day when Henrietta had made a visit to town and they sat by the oval watching the boys kick a football around, ‘Australia versus England.’
‘What do you mean?’ Henrietta had been a little bewildered.
‘They’re so different, the boys.’ In her guilt, Henrietta froze. ‘Malcolm is Terence and Kit is you,’ Aggie continued, ‘it’s quite amazing, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Henrietta had relaxed after that.
The boys were the best of friends. Malcolm was protective of Kit, and Kit idolised his big brother. Strangely enough, it was Malcolm Henrietta most worried about. He so wanted to emulate his father, and she knew that the boy, despite his bravado, was often fearful of the tests Terence set for him.
Some of them were easy. ‘How do you like your steak, son?’ Terence would ask.
‘Rare and bloody, it’s the only way,’ the boy would proudly reply.
‘Cut its horns off and wipe its arse, eh?’ Terence would whisper, it was a joke they shared. ‘But we never say that in polite company,’ Terence always added for Henrietta’s benefit.
Kit refused to eat meat which was bleeding. ‘I don’t like it,’ he stated, and no insistence from his father could force him to eat it.
When the lessons were a little harsher it was worse. Malcolm, at six years of age, had been forced to watch the slaughter of the steers. Henrietta knew the child had been terrified, but in order to earn his father’s approval he’d stood through the ordeal. Kit hadn’t. Several years later, when he was six and it was his turn, he’d run away before the shot had been fired.
‘The boy’s a coward,’ Terence had complained to Henrietta.
‘He’s too young,’ she’d said, ‘give him time.’
‘You’re never too young to learn,’ Terence had insisted. It was a quote of Jock’s he’d heard many a time as a child. ‘My father did it to me and I did it to Malcolm, and Malcolm handled it just as I did. Kit has to learn.’ And then he’d accused her of mollycoddling the child.
Terence interpreted Kit’s refusals to obey him as not only disobedience, but a sign of weakness. Henrietta considered it a show of strength and, although she worried about the friction which occasionally resulted between the two of them, her elder son Malcolm remained her most worrying concern. At the moment, his father was his hero, but if Terence kept pushing the boy too far Malcolm could well become a frightened person. She often saw fear in his eyes. Not only fear of the tests which Terence set him, but fear that he could not live up to his father’s expectations. She prayed that Terence would not break the boy’s spirit.
‘They’re home,’ she called. She’d been watching anxiously and was relieved to see Fast Asleep and Seldom Awake plodding through the main gates towards the stables. She and Terence went down to the yards to help the boys unsaddle the horses. The children’s ride to the home paddock and back had been a success.
‘Kit came off,’ Malcolm announced as the two boys slithered down from the horses’ backs. Kit darted an anxious glance at his brother, he hadn’t intended telling his dad that he’d fallen. ‘And he got straight back up,’ Malcolm boasted. He knew full well there was no crime in coming off a horse, in fact it was good, Dad said, it taught you a lesson, just so long as you got straight back up.
‘Good boy,’ Terence said, and Kit smiled gratefully at his brother. ‘Did you hang on to the reins?’ Terence asked.
Kit missed Malcolm’s signal to lie. ‘No,’ he said without thinking.
‘How many times have I told you,’ Terence said sternly. ‘You could be stranded a hundred miles from home if your horse bolts on you.’
‘But Seldom doesn’t bolt,’ the boy replied. ‘He just stands there.’
‘That’s not the point …’
‘Did you hurt yourself?’ Henrietta interrupted. The right sleeve of Kit’s checked shirt was torn.
‘Yep,’ he said with a touch of pride and he pulled his shirt up for her to inspect the graze on his elbow.
‘How did you fall?’ Terence asked. Henrietta wished he’d stop grilling the children, she wanted to take Kit to the house and dress the graze, it wasn’t deep but there was grit in it, the wound needed disinfecting.
It was Kit’s turn now to return the favour and boast on behalf of his brother. ‘Malcolm got Fast to take a jump,’ he said.
‘Is that true?’ Terence asked the older boy.
‘Yeah,’ Malcolm nodded with camaraderie to Kit. It had only been a little log, barely eighteen inches in height, but after much belting with a stick on Fast’s healthy rump, the animal had clumsily lurched over it.
‘That horse has never jumped in its life, well done, boy,’ Terence gave a guffaw of delight, ‘well done.’
‘I tried to get Seldom to take the jump but he wouldn’t,’ Kit continued with his explanation. Seldom had followed Fast as he usually did but when he’d come to the log, he’d stopped dead in his tracks. ‘And I came off.’ But his father, still chortling with pride at his elder son’s feat, wasn’t listening.
‘Come on,’ Henrietta took Kit by the hand, ‘we’re going to clean up that elbow.’
‘We’re going to water the horses and brush them down first,’ Terence said.
‘You two can do that,’ Henrietta firmly replied as she set off for the house, the seven-year-old in tow. ‘We two are going to disinfect this arm.’
The following day was school for Malcolm. Henrietta drove him in to Darwin each morning in the Holden utility and collected him in the afternoon, occasionally taking Kit with her for the ride. Accustomed as she was to outback distances, four hours’ daily driving meant little to her. Next year, when he would turn eight, Kit too would attend the school, but in the meantime Henrietta tutored
him at home.
Aggie reported favourably to Henrietta on Malcolm’s progress, but true to form she was brutally honest.
‘He’s a bright boy, and he enjoys learning,’ she said, ‘but he’s very opinionated for a kiddie his age. According to Malcolm there’s only one way of doing things, and that’s his way. He becomes quite aggressive when the others don’t agree.’
‘It’s his father’s influence,’ Henrietta admitted, with a freedom which rather surprised Aggie. Since their altercation years ago, Aggie had taken care to avoid any discussion of her friend’s husband or marriage. Henrietta appeared, however, to feel no disloyalty at all in mentioning Terence, it was obvious that Malcolm was her main concern. ‘I’m sure high school will change his attitude,’ she added, trying to sound confident. She certainly hoped that it would.
In his thirteenth year, Malcolm would be sent off to boarding school in Adelaide. Henrietta would miss him, she knew it, and she’d worry about him desperately, but loath as she was at the thought of his leaving home, she was hoping that the absence of his father and the constant companionship of other children his own age would do him good. No longer would he be the oldest, and the first one to face each test as it came along. And no longer would he have to accept his father’s entrenched opinions, he would be presented with options. Henrietta only prayed that it would not be too late.
Her favourite day of the week was Saturday. Saturday was a work day for Terence and, free of his criticism, she’d play games with her children. It started first thing in the morning; Terence always left at dawn to meet up with Buff Nelson at the overseer’s cottage five miles from the homestead, and Henrietta and the boys had the house to themselves. She had made it Nellie’s regular day off, and Pearl had long since married her young man and moved out, although she visited from time to time.
Henrietta always cooked boiled eggs for breakfast on Saturdays and she and the boys drew faces on the eggs before they ate them. It was a never-ending source of amusement.
From the outset, Kit had drawn an animal’s face on his egg. ‘That’s a pig’s egg,’ he’d said the first time.
‘Pigs don’t lay eggs,’ Malcolm had corrected him.
‘My pigs do.’
After that it had become a running gag. ‘That’s a cat’s egg,’ or ‘that’s a horse’s egg,’ Kit would say. Malcolm would correct him, ‘They don’t lay eggs,’ and Kit would reply in all seriousness, ‘Mine do.’ Then both boys would shriek with laughter. Henrietta found it very healthy, although she knew Terence wouldn’t approve of their frivolity.
On Saturdays they played hide and seek or I-spy. When it was I-spy Kit would always pick things that Malcolm insisted didn’t count. Like the air, or a breeze, or a smell. ‘But you can’t see them,’ Malcolm would say.
‘That doesn’t matter, they’re there, you can feel them.’ In his own way Kit could be as pedantic as Malcolm. ‘And that’s what spies do, they feel things.’ Kit was convinced that a game called I-spy must be about spies.
Sometimes Malcolm would become exasperated, and sometimes he’d find it funny, but Henrietta noticed that he was never aggressive towards his little brother. She’d been worried by Aggie’s talk of his aggression at school and watched closely for signs of it at home.
Saturday was also the day they went hunting for stones. Henrietta knew she was flirting with danger. Terence didn’t like Malcolm’s preoccupation with his collection.
‘He’s obsessed with the things, it’s not natural,’ he said.
‘He’s a child, Terence,’ she patiently replied, ‘they’re his toys, and children get obsessions about toys.’
But toys were of little interest to Terence unless the children could learn from them. Even Malcolm’s toy gun had become obsolete now that he was being taught to shoot. In Terence’s family a boy’s tenth birthday meant an introduction to the use of firearms, and after several months Malcolm could already hit tin cans from thirty paces with a .22 rifle. ‘There’s nothing to be learned from playing with a pile of rocks,’ Terence maintained.
So Saturday stone hunting was their secret, and the children seemed to understand that. They would sift through their collection when they got home, and play games with them, and then the best of the stones would go into boxes to be brought out the following Saturday.
The Darwin collection, Malcolm’s pride and joy, was kept in a separate box. No stones on the property compared with his Darwin collection. The rocks of Bullalalla were harsh. Some were flat, some spiky, and they ranged in colour from light grey to black, and orange to red. They were dramatic, certainly, you could build a castle out of them, but there was no silky smoothness to the Bullalalla stones. Nor were there lavenders and pinks and apricots to be found, all the variables of colour which existed in the sun-parched, sea-worn stones from the beaches of Darwin.
His Darwin collection was very precious to Malcolm, but he shared it with Kit. On the kitchen floor, they would build a fortress from the Bullalalla stones, and in the centre they would make a mound out of the Darwin collection. These were the jewels, and they had to be protected from the marauders. The boys would attack the fortress with their tin soldiers.
Terence had approved of tin soldiers when Malcolm was little. Just as he’d approved of miniature fighter planes and warships. He’d considered them educational toys at the time and, when Malcolm had been five or six, he’d taught the boy battle manoeuvres. But he no longer played games with his firstborn son, Malcolm was too old for such nonsense, and Kit somehow didn’t enter the equation. Unbeknownst to their father, however, protecting the rock fortress and guarding the treasure was a favourite Saturday pastime for both boys.
One Saturday, only a fortnight or so after the boys’ expedition to the home paddock, Terence arrived home in the early afternoon. He and Buff Nelson had been out surveying the fencing—the maintenance of fences on the vast property was a never-ending affair—when a dust storm had come up. Normally the men would have stuck it out. Huddled under their ground cloths or their oilskin jackets, they would have weathered the storm. But this was a bad one, there was no point in staying on, so they’d come back, Buff to his cottage and Terence to the homestead.
Caked in grit, his eyes, his ears, his nose full of the fine red dust, uncomfortable and irritable, Terence walked into the kitchen to see his wife and two sons sprawled belly down on the wooden floor studying a pile of rocks. And for the first time in years, the madness came upon him.
They were so engrossed that none of them had heard him. Terence, plodding wearily, had made little noise.
Suddenly, a large boot flashed before them, and the stones were viciously scattered, the fortress and its treasure strewn in every direction.
Henrietta grabbed the boys and pulled them to their feet. They could have lost an eye from the force with which Terence had sent the stones flying.
She saw the madness instantly.
‘What have I told you about these bloody rocks!’ he yelled at her. ‘Get them out of here, do you hear me!’ And he kicked at the stones once again sending them whistling through the air like missiles. ‘Get them out of here!’
She didn’t waste time collecting them, it was more important to get the boys out of the kitchen and away from their father. She hustled them into the hall.
‘Go upstairs to your rooms,’ she instructed, ‘and don’t come down until I tell you.’
‘Will you save my Darwin collection, Mum?’ Malcolm pleaded. ‘Just the Darwin ones, please?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I promise. Now go upstairs.’ The boys obeyed and she went back to face Terence and clear away the offending stones.
He was standing in the centre of the kitchen staring down at the tin soldiers, and he seemed perfectly calm. Had the madness left him so quickly, she wondered. She said nothing, but knelt and started sweeping up the stones with a dustpan and brush, careful to put the Darwin ones in their special box.
Terence stooped and picked up several of the toy soldiers, placin
g them on the kitchen table.
‘They were playing military manoeuvres,’ she said, hoping to mollify him.
‘Yes, I can see that.’ A number of the toy soldiers were time-worn and battered, they’d been Terence’s when he was a child. He hadn’t noticed them when the rage at the sight of the forbidden rocks had overtaken him.
‘The soldiers were attacking the fortress,’ she explained.
‘It’s a childish game, Malcolm’s too old for toy soldiers. Tell the boys to come in here, I want to talk to them.’
He seemed rational, and Henrietta decided it would court far more danger if she were to question his orders. She finished clearing up the mess, threw the stones in the bin, and placed the box with the Darwin collection on the table.
‘Malcolm! Kit!’ she called up the stairs from the hall. ‘Your father wants to talk to you.’
The boys tentatively entered the kitchen where Terence was seated at the table.
‘Sit down,’ he instructed, and they did. ‘Malcolm,’ he said, ‘what would you do if your mates at school called you a sissy?’
Malcolm stared back. It was a test, but he wasn’t sure of the right answer. Was he supposed to say that he’d fight them?
‘You wouldn’t like it if they called you a sissy, would you?’ his father asked.
Malcolm shook his head vigorously, ‘a sissy’ was the worst possible thing a kid could be called.
‘Good.’ Terence continued to address his elder son quietly and authoritatively, but as an adult, ‘You are ten years old, you can ride a horse and you can shoot a rifle, don’t you think playing with toy soldiers and rocks is a little bit childish?’
‘Yes,’ the boy agreed.
‘Good.’ Terence said again, pleased with the response. ‘I’ll let you keep the toy soldiers as a memento of your childhood,’ he continued magnanimously, ‘but you’ll throw out the rocks. Right now.’
Kit looked anxiously at his brother, not the Darwin collection surely, they were the jewels and Malcolm treasured them. But Malcolm didn’t flinch, he nodded obediently.