And yet time could kill her, too; time could finish her off. But what could he do? Wait and watch in the darkness; listen in the darkness; hope in the darkness and get Christ there beside him to help him hope.
He ran back to the sulky and lit the hurricane lamp. He covered her with a blanket. And he waited. It was an hour before a car came, but it came from the south. And that was good. It was only ten miles to Casino. He waved the lantern. The car stopped. Macauley pushed his face into the driver’s with the urgency of his message and the frenzy of his command. The motorist seemed to absorb both, judging by the speed with which he tore away.
Macauley waited. He was anxious lest the motorist be delayed, lest he decide not to go to the hospital and report. Then he heard the sound from the north like a faraway sawmill. The ambulance men told him nothing. He went with them.
He waited again. He waited amid the smell of waxed linoleum, linen, and antiseptics. A doctor came, frowning. He asked Macauley if he was the father. He looked away. He said they would have to operate. He looked away again.
Macauley lost his temper. He snarled, ‘All right, don’t be a bloody granny! Tell me. What’s the betting?’
The doctor said quietly, ‘She’s in pretty bad shape. If there are any other relatives you want here I think you’d better inform them.’
Macauley grasped the doctor’s lapels. ‘Listen, sawbones, you’re licked before you even start. Do something! You’ve got her in her coffin before she’s bloody well dead. Do something, can’t you?’
He pulled his hands away, dropped them at his side. His voice sounded harshly unnatural even to his own ears.
‘We’ll do all we can,’ the doctor said, unruffled, assuring. ‘All we humanly can.’ He touched Macauley’s arm. ‘I’ll get the nurse to give you something to settle your nerves.’
‘I’m all right,’ Macauley snapped. ‘Never mind me.’ He suddenly gripped the doctor’s arm as he was about to go. His voice was lower, trenchant with appeal. ‘Go your hardest, doc. Give her a chance. She’ll do the rest. She’s tough.’
He went out into the darkness. Two policemen were getting out of a car at the kerb. They called him. They asked him who he was, and was he the victim’s father, and he answered them. They questioned him. What he saw. How much he knew. He told them. He couldn’t be sure of the colour of the car, it was too dark to see, and he was so distracted he didn’t take much notice. But it wasn’t a light colour. It looked to be a heavy job, modern shape, but he couldn’t describe the design. It could have been anything from a Chev to a Plymouth.
‘What about your gear?’ one of them said. ‘Well run you out there if you like and you can bring it in.’
‘It can wait till the morning,’ Macauley said.
They drove off, and Macauley went down the street. He thought about it for ten minutes before he sent the telegram to his wife. He said briefly: ‘Buster Casino Public Hospital. Not expected to live. Mac.’ He sent it urgent.
Then Macauley set about looking for a man, or what passed for one. He didn’t know whether his quarry had gone straight through and on perhaps to Lismore or Tweed Heads, and because he didn’t know he meant to make sure he had or hadn’t vanished. Somewhere in the warren of this town maybe there lurked a cur – a cur that wrapped forty hundred-weight of steel round himself before he boxed on, and boxed on with fragile flesh and bone, and even then ran when he struck the blow, ran like a craven whelp with its tail between its legs. This was the man Macauley wanted, this hit-run driver, the dingo of the highway.
Up and down the main street he walked, first on one side and then on the other. He looked for dented mudguards. He looked for bent fenders. He looked for blood on bonnets and windscreens. He looked at the faces that passed. He looked for strain, nervousness, guilt.
In restaurants and cafes he looked around him, sniping off the diners.
He walked down back streets, side lanes. He went right round the town. And when he came back to his starting point he started all over again. Doggedly he retraced his steps, alert, scrutinising, proving that his quest was futile, disappointed to prove it, but gratified that he had proved it.
They’d catch him, Macauley thought. They’d do what they had to do. They’d give him his medicine, some medicine, not half enough. They’d play around like poofters, with the kid gloves and the soft soap. A kid’s life, like the life of an old man, had little value. They’d send him up for a year, maybe two. The day he came out, Macauley would be waiting for him. And then the real trial would start, and the just sentence pronounced, the fit punishment inflicted. And if they didn’t find him, if he got away as some cunning dingos do, time might fall down on the job but eternity wouldn’t; or if it did the stars swung blind in their courses, a man’s soul was dirt, there was no God.
He was feeling the strain when he got back to the hospital. There was a fatigue all through him. It came not so much from physical exertion as from an ordeal of spirit. Buster was still unconscious. They were fighting for her life. Macauley sat inside, walked about outside. There was no change.
In the dewy dawn he walked out and got his things together. He found Gooby beside the road in the grass where it had been flung from her senseless hand. He unstrapped his swag. His eyes clung to the books he had bought on raising children, diet, nursing care, diseases. They seemed to ridicule him. His mind was in a turmoil of recriminations. If he had left her with Bella, if he had left her with Lily, even if her mother had succeeded in abducting her … she wouldn’t have been lying in there now; this wouldn’t have happened.
He took the sulky and Windbag back into town. He did nothing but wait round and inquire. In the afternoon he saw the doctor. Fitzmaurice by name, and he seemed to notice him for the first time; a tall, well-built light-skinned man with gingery hair and freckled face.
‘Still unconscious,’ he said, ‘but she’s hanging on.’ He said it as though he found it remarkable and encouraging.
Macauley plucked at his arm. ‘Last night,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to cut up rough. Don’t hold it against me.’
Fitzmaurice only smiled, and patted his shoulder. ‘That’s all right, old man.’
Macauley got through the night with little sleep. The next day was like the day before. Buster was still in a coma; everything was being done to save her. Macauley waited about. He thought, half expected, his wife would appear any moment. She didn’t turn up. But he had an answer from her.
In the afternoon a portly man with a heavy face threaded with little red veins ferreted him out in the hospital yard, introduced himself as Bathgate of the local firm of solicitors, and served a notice on him. Macauley took it unsurely and read the contents. They told him stiffly and formally that his wife had made application to the court for the custody of their child, and that the case was listed for hearing on a date two days hence.
For a moment Macauley was utterly bewildered. ‘Where did you get this? How?’
‘We received it in the post today,’ Bathgate replied, freeing his fat neck momentarily from its catch in the tight collar. Seeing Macauley’s confusion, he went on. ‘It had to be served on you personally. You know about that sort of thing, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but who — ?’
‘It’s a firm of Sydney solicitors,’ Bathgate explained. ‘Our colleagues advised us where you could be located and begged us to serve you with the notice.’
‘Whose solicitors are they?’
‘The petitioner’s, of course.’
‘They must have known I was here,’ Macauley muttered.
‘Obviously.’
‘But it says this case is to be heard Friday. Today’s Wednesday. They’re not giving me much time.’
The fat solicitor looked at him with an officious aloofness as though averse to consultations without a fee. ‘Probably it’s not a rush job, if that’s what you are thinking. Our colleagues have probably been chasing you, strenuously trying to discover your whereabouts, and now they know. The application in question was
probably filed a month ago.’
Macauley seemed to have difficulty in taking it all in. ‘What do I do about it?’
Bathgate shrugged. ‘That’s your headache. If you wish to contest the claim you’ve got to be present in court. If not, if you don’t want representation, then you just forget about it.’
‘What happens then?’ Macauley said. ‘If I don’t appear, I mean?’
‘What do you think?’ Bathgate jerked up his neck. ‘The court will simply make an order giving the party to the application custody of the child. Provided, of course, the court is satisfied with her ability to take care of it. And it usually is.’
‘She’s living in adultery,’ Macauley exclaimed.
Bathgate merely lifted his eyebrows. ‘That is not a serious objection. In fact, it has nothing in a sense to do with it. She might be an excellent mother. And that is all the court is concerned about. Its rulings are made in the sole interest of the child’s welfare.’
Macauley looked away reflectively for a moment. ‘You’ve got all the drum about this,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me – will the case come off on Friday if I’m not there?’
Bathgate wasn’t so prompt with his answer this time. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But most likely it would. For instance, suppose I hadn’t been able to find you. Your wife’ – he corrected himself – ‘the alleged applicant or petitioner could inform the court that you cannot be traced, and the court has power to dispense with the formality of serving notice on you.’
‘You mean that would give her open slather?’
‘In a sense, yes, more or less.’
‘But listen,’ Macauley cried. ‘That kid’s in hospital. It’s touch and go whether she’ll live. My wife knows that. How could she come at a thing like this when she’s a full wake-up to what’s going on?’
Bathgate gave his neck a decent jerk so that he instantly became an inch taller.
‘Not knowing the circumstances and not knowing the party,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid that’s more than I can tell you.’
‘Okay,’ Macauley said, absently, but in a tone of dismissal. ‘I’ll buy you a drink some time.’
He had to think and think hard and fast. The news had jolted him out of his torpor of shock and impotence into the old fire of rebellion and pugnacity. The challenge picked off his nerves, every one, and his nerves bristled in goading and readiness. Yet the reality of that message jarred with his sense of human decency, and his knowledge of her, his wife. He couldn’t see her just cold-bloodedly rushing off to inform her solicitors the moment she learnt his address. It was an inaction incompatible in his mind with the character of any woman, let alone a mother whose child was dying. It had come to this, the two of them wrangling over a scrap of humanity, like dogs wrangling over a bone; only dogs wrangle for the same reason: her reason and his were totally different. He was sure of that. But if the child died, what use was it to her then? What was the winning of a court case then but a hollow victory?
And that thought gave him another, and insight gave him reasons, and reshuffled the picture to try to convince him; it flared his emotions, but his mind could not readily accept it.
One thing he knew, though: the challenge was there and he had to fight.
He went into the hospital, and he told them he was going to Sydney. He didn’t know for how long, but he’d keep in touch. The attendant gave him a telegram. Outside he opened it, and read: ‘Terribly sorry. Please tell us if we can do anything. Lily Macready.’
It warmed him.
He went to the police station, briefly explained his trouble and asked them if they would keep an eye on his things. They told him to bring the horse and sulky and leave it in the police paddock, and his swag, they said, would be in nobody’s way at the station.
He took what he needed out of it – a shirt, a pair of socks, a handkerchief, a bottle of hair oil and a toothbrush – and wrapped them all in a sheet of brown paper tied with a string.
In the train he could think of nothing but what lay behind and what lay ahead. He could not get away from the torment of his imaginings. He should be back there. He had to be down there. And still he was here, shackled to space and handcuffed to time and both of them calling the tune. The train talked to him.
It said, ‘You won’t get away; you won’t get away … She’ll die in the night; she’ll die in the night … You gave me no life; you gave me no life …’
It chattered and rocked and hammered and gnashed. It pricked him hard and told him this, ‘Hang on to your guts; hang on to your guts … Pull yourself together; pull yourself together …’
He dragged his mind away from the mirage of cleanliness and white starched uniforms and hospital smells and looked in on the bleak dignity of a courtroom: the high windows and the cold polished floor: he could see people like people at a funeral and he could hear the voices; and then it was his turn and they were waiting and he didn’t know what to say. The judge, the lawyers, they looked strange; they looked as if they were not the sort of men who could understand what he had to say; the sort of men who would make what he had to say seem weak and foolish, even to him.
But he was saying something, out of the compulsion of his stubbornness, because if he had to lose he needed to lose with his teeth in their throats; and what he was saying was the truth, and nobody could say anymore.
I’ve never hurt that kid. Maybe I’ve been rough and hard, but I’ve never ill-treated her. She came as a stranger, and she grew on me. I didn’t want her, but she wanted me, and I was wrong. She pulled me up. From her I found this out: to live is not easy and often by the time a man has learnt how to live his life is over. She had a home with me. It wasn’t much, but she didn’t grumble. She put the hobbles on me. She had a rope round my neck and she wouldn’t let go. I didn’t have to be frightened of her getting away from me. She was frightened of me getting away from her. You know what a dog’s like. He knows you’re the boss. He respects your authority. It shows strength. He feels protected. He knows that, and that’s all that matters. You can dress him down, but he holds no grudges. You can beat that dog and he’ll forgive you. That kid’s the same, just like a dog.
I mean no disrespect, but all this – strangers sitting in on a man’s life, ready to lay it out for him. It doesn’t seem right to me. I’ve had all the bush lawyers and all the bush Solomons talking to me and they’ve had the world’s problems carved up and solved in two ticks on a deal-board table, but their own lives were slung together like a crow’s nest, and they didn’t know how to put order in them. Look, if a bomb fell and a man had to gather the few things he had and his children with him and take them away; if he had to go through hell, and his kids with him, who’d point a finger? Men would help where they could. They’d understand. There’d be sympathy, not condemnation. They wouldn’t think hard of him.
I’ve done my child no wrong. I’ll admit this: I took her out of spite, and it turned out to be a good thing for her. It was sour soil she was growing in. It was rank. I don’t want to see her back there. But I don’t want to see her in a home, either. If you’re dead set against giving her to me then give her to her mother. Maybe it’s not right that any mother is better than none, but the way I see it any mother is better than a home. You ever see kids in a home? They crowd you when you go there. They think you must be their mother and father. You don’t eat too good for days after coming away from a place like that. Your sleep’s not too hot, either.
That was all he could say, and he’d leave it at that.
The first thing he did when he arrived in the city was to go to the post office and put in a long-distance call. Dr Fitzmaurice spoke to him. Macauley asked for the truth. He got it. Still pretty low. He came out, turning the words over in his mind. Still pretty low. Hanging on. Hanging on to what and what with? Not three feet tall, not three stone weight, soft flesh and gristly bones, shot nerves and somebody else’s blood, fractured skull. Four years on the earth: knowing so much and yet no chance to know anything. But h
anging on to something and with something.
He booked in to the hotel, and walked about the city. He drank one beer. He had a cheap meal in a hamburger. It nearly made him vomit. The noise belted his eardrums. The grime covered his face and he wiped off dirty sweat on his handkerchief. People jostled him, scurrying with a strained look in their eyes or an easy acceptance. This was like being in the belly of a dragon. It was like being in a box and struggling for light and air. This was the city and he wanted no part of it. Too many strangers. Too many hard roads. Too many fences. It was a circus he’d never join.
At nightfall he rang Casino again. A nurse answered. Precise and formal like a stone figure talking. The child was out of the coma but still in grave danger.
He wouldn’t have got that from her if he hadn’t told Fitzmaurice he wanted no punches pulled. He would have been fobbed off with that old line of bulldust about the patient doing as well as can be expected. They made a bloody man sick with their queasy hypocrisy.
Standing on the kerb in the uncaring city, in the loneliness of lights and people; thinking of a car screeching in the darkness and a pulse of life in a hospital bed; thinking of the wire he had sent, and outraged by the despicable response to it, Macauley decided, was driven by his feelings, to confront his wife then and now and not in the morning.
The residential was the same, only older and shabbier. There was still a scoop in the sandstone step from the abrasion of feet. The fly-specked oniony bulb still fought the darkness on the staircase. There was a strip of light under the door. The doorknob still lolled dejectedly.
Macauley didn’t knock. He opened the door, and the moment he stepped in the room, the moment he saw her, his angry heartsick bafflement vanished. He was glad in a way that there was an excuse and a reason for her apparent inhumanity, glad though he condoned neither. He was caught up in an anger of disgust; words of opprobrium rushed like gall into his mouth, but he held them back at bay, sensitive to their futility.
The Shiralee Page 21