Best Australian Short Stories

by Douglas Stewart

  As for Mr Hardcastle, his big, knuckly hands gripping the steer-ing wheel of his shiny red car—he’s got his rabbit all right, and you can almost see her in his mouth; the new Mrs Hardcastle—brand-new; only last night—snuggling beside him in her coney-seal coat. The tip of her small nose twitches.

  “You’re coldl” shouts Mr Hardcastle. You can tell he’s a fox by the bark of his laughter. “You’re cold.” (Bark! Bark! Bark!)

  “Oh, no,” she says, archly, sarcastically. She laughs, too, very loud and shrill and high, like a tremendous and surprising bell; the pealing of wedding bells.

  “Hey, yes you are, you’re cold. It’s too early in the morning for you. Ha, we’ll make a man of you yet.”

  “You wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Ha, that’s right!” Mr Hardcastle barks and barks. “But you are cold. I’ll warm you up. I’ll stop the car and warm you up.”

  “You’d better drive on. Besides, I’m not a bit cold. Really I’m not. I love this South Coast in the morning. The mountains with the sun on them; and the sea that delicate, delicate blue; and the foam. It’s a wonderful place—for a honeymoon.”

  “Honeymoon! Ha!” The big fox barks. His hair is silver, there is a bald patch on top, his eyes are grey and small; the character of his face is in his large, fleshy nose and his mouth, which sets firmly, even savagely, as he steers the big car round a bend. He makes it lurch round the corners.

  “Just to be driving along,” says the rabbit. She smiles up at him, so that her frizzy hair and her horn-rimmed glasses seem to disappear, and all he can see are her red, red lips and her enormous false teeth. “And a whole week of it,” she says. “A whole week to Melbourne.”

  If I can find that Middleton scoundrel in Melbourne prosecute the brute,” he says. “He took us down. Deliberately. We supply him with the goods—two years ago—and that’s the last we hear of him. I’ll get him and I’ll send him to jail.” Mr Hardcastle has a factory.

  “Oh,” says the new Mrs Hardcastle, “don’t let us think about business. This is too heavenly.”

  But the fox—the other red fox in the rushes—is certainly thinking about business.

  He knows it is heavenly, all right. The sun is warm on his back; the creek before him glitters; he can smell the salt sea, the tidal mud, the crabs; he can see a black-and-white bird, a pee-wee, that runs along the path between the rushes. But he cannot catch that pee-wee. And if he could it would not be much for a fox’s breakfast. To run from dawn to seven o’clock, to hunt from dawn to seven o’clock, to hunt and sniff and hunt and sniff all the way from the rocky bush to within sight of Joe Packet’s store and teashop by the bridge on Fat Chow Creek, to watch the mist lift and the dew dry and the seagulls go over in a clear, shiny light, to have the scent of shellfish and birds and vegetation in your nostrils—all this is to make hunger grow immense, a madness.

  And if it is a madness to sneak right to the edge of the rushes where, along the line of his withered corn, Joe Packet has set his rabbit-traps—then let it he madness. But nobody sings or shouts in Joe Packet’s store and tea-rooms, no smoke yet curls from the chimney. Joe Packet and Mrs Packet lie snug abed while the fox is at their rabbit-traps.

  Yet it might, indeed, be a mad fox who thinks he can catch Joe Packet asleep. Joe is like a fox, too; he lies snug with his vixen in the warm burrow of the bed, but all night long he leaves his mouth out in the paddock to catch the rabbits; his spare mouth, his dozen spare mouths, all gaping, waiting, with sharp steel teeth. Joe Packet has caught two rabbits while he sleeps. Broken, they lie in his spare steel mouths—fast shut these mouths are. How warm, how appetising they smell! How inviting is the thought of pink flesh under_ that soft grey fur! The red fox lolls his tongue. He whines with pleasure.

  He takes a little run round the rabbits, partly for joy, partly to make sure Joe Packet is not about. Not a sign of him; only, on the steel mouths, a little rank smell of Joe Packet where he has touched them last night; to cover a yawn, it might be.

  Fox, fox, Joe Packet never yawns. Look out, red fox!

  Yes, yelp! But yelp too late, you mad red dog of the mountains. Joe Packet is a lucky man, he has caught a fox in his trap.

  Joe Packet stirs in his bed. Time for a cup of tea. And the store and the tea-rooms to open. Someone might be coming along the road. A fine day for business.

  And then, too, a fine day to take a little walk round the traps while the wife lights the fire and cooks the breakfast. A black woman in the mornings! But a blue day outside. Joe Packet in his blue dungarees, his hard, big belly rolling over the narrow black belt; his open grey shirt showing the dark hair on his chest; dark hair turning grey.

  The square head of Joe Packet, usually hunched forward, now thrown back as he snuffs the salty air. The feet of Joe Packet, in the unlaced, torn, dirty, comfortable, rubber-soled sandshoes, travelling lightly over Fat Chow bridge. Grunt as he climbs through the fence.

  Stealthily along the corn, as if the dead rabbits could run away out of his mouths. Ho! And a high, whinnying laugh.

  A fox, a fox in the trap! Before he can bite his leg off. A stick, a stick, a cudgel. The red fox spins arid dances.

  Joe Packet, a heavy man, light on his feet, darting about the corn-field and the rushes, hunting for a cudgel—he hardly notices the big, red car crossing the bridge.

  Burly man, tall skinny girl, Mr and Mrs Hardcastle alight from the car at the tea-rooms. Ah, Joe Packet sees them.

  Thud goes the stick on the fox. “Tourists!” says Joe. “My lucky day today!”

  Mr Hardcastle is as hungry as the fox was, but nobody is going to hit him on the head with a cudgel. Not if he knows it.

  “Come on now. Quick, quick, quick!” he says to Joe Packet’s wife.

  “A cup of tea before we start. Then bacon and eggs for two.”

  “Oh,” says Mrs Hardcastle. “Just a piece of toast. Just a wafer.” “Bacon and eggs for two!” shouts Mr Hardcastle. “Now, quick about it, old dear.”

  “Certainly,” says Joe Packet’s wife.

  The honeymoon couple are alone. They are among fragile cane chairs, and glass-topped tables and vases of paper roses. A wall of windows shows between creamy curtains the distant blue of the sea and a section of the white-painted railing of the bridge. Shafts of sunlight enter. Almost, a faint, subsiding rattle is heard as Mr Hardcastle’s jollity ceases to crash about the glassy room. The floor quakes as Joe Packet’s wife goes about her business.

  “They’d do pretty well here,” says Mr Hardcastle confidentially. “Cheap. No rent. Grow your own vegetables. Pluck your own fowls. Pluck the tourists.”

  “Really?” says Mrs Hardcastle. “So far from anywhere—I wouldn’t have thought. But of course you’d know.”

  Is she mocking him when she flatters, or does she really respect it so much—his business ability? Mr Hardcastle’s eyes narrow. His mouth takes on that savage, down-curving line that shows when he is heaving the car round a bend. “Of course they’d do well!” he shouts.

  “A peculiar woman, isn’t she?” says Mrs Hardcastle. “So dark and slinking. She gives me a creepy feeling. That long, snooping nose, those jet-black eyes. She’s the sort of woman who’d have lain in wait for travellers in the old days—an innkeeper’s wife—and murdered them in their beds.” Mrs Hardcastle’s large eyes blink behind the horn-rimmed glasses. She thrusts her hands into her frizzy hair and drags forward a black curl of it, as if she is the villain in a melodrama throwing his cloak over his features. “Like some cold, slinking animal. I’m sure she’d like to murder us.”

  “Stuff !” roars Mr Hardcastle. He has noticed his wife’s tendency to romanticize. It might become worse.

  Joe Packet’s wife brings in tea and toast. She points her long nose at the tourists. “Joe’s caught a fox. He’s out there now with the skin.”

  “Now, what’s that worth?” says Mr Hardcastle quickly.

  “A fox. The skin of a fox. Oh, I must see it!” cries Mrs Hard-castle.
“Where is it? Can I see it? Where?”

  “On the garage door,” says Mrs Packet. “He’s nailing it up to dry.” “To think,” says Mrs Hardcastle dramatically, pausing in the doorway, “to think that at this very hour I would have been arriving at the office and taking the cover off my typewriter; and here—down the South Coast—on the way to Melbourne—and the lovely skin of a fox!” She rushes out.

  “She’s excited, isn’t she?” says Joe Packet’s lean dark wife. “Just like a girl.”

  “My dear lady,” says Mr Hardcastle very winningly, “how much you could excite me by bringing me my bacon and eggs.” He pushes a whole finger of toast into his mouth, and the butter runs down his fingers. He sucks them. “Ah!”

  “Just like a girl, eh?” he thinks as Joe Packet’s wife retires to the kitchen. “Ha! Last night!” (He barks.) Yes, like a girl. And not as if—well, she’d been his secretary for ten years. Secretary, you could call it. And still like a girl; kittenish, excited; rolling her big eyes behind the glasses, twitching her nose, smiling with her huge white teeth. A girl, a kitten, a rabbit.

  Mr Hardcastle’s rabbit is forty years old. Why marry her, then? And after ten years. Well, we grow old. Time, loneliness and—the dark thing. A widower in a dark house. And then, she wanted it so much. On the shelf; spinsterish; really, a little bit dotty; damn’ nearly, anyhow. Why not please her? A house, money, a coney-seal coat, a car, a wedding, a honeymoon on the South Coast; and a man —ha, yes, a man 1—how much he could give his little rabbit.

  Joe Packet’s dark-eyed wife brings him his bacon and eggs. “I’ll keep the lady’s warm for her,” she said. “Are you sure she really wants it?”

  “Of course she wants it,” says Mr Hardcastle roughly. “Fill her out. Do her good. A leaf of lettuce in a back room in Darlinghurst, that’s what these girls live on.”

  Mrs Hardcastle’s knees are too bony, he thinks. Ah, well, she shall eat. Not really a girl, not trim and tight and bouncy; but there you are.

  “How would I look with a girl?” he asks Joe Packet’s wife. “An old codger like me!”

  “I’m sure you’d look very well with a girl, sir,” says the sallow-faced woman diplomatically.

  “Ha!” he says scornfully. “Run you down into the grave and then make off with your money. You don’t catch me like that.” Mrs Hardcastle comes flying in.

  “Oh!” she cries, “it’s horrible. He’s got it all pegged out on the wall, crucified. The inside of the skin showing. Ugh, slimy. And the head’s lolling forward, it looks alive. And it’s grinning. There on the wall, grinning.” Her frizzy hair seems to be springing up and down with alarm.

  “Ha!” says Mr Hardcastle. “I must have a look at that.” He rises from the table.

  “Oh,” says his wife, “let’s go. We’ve miles to go today. Let’s drive on now.”

  Mr Hardcastle pushes the brand-new Mrs Hardcastle into her chair. “You sit down and eat your breakfast,” he says.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Eat it. It’s ordered. We’ll have to pay for it—you’ll have to pay, because you’re the housekeeper—so eat it up and be done with it.” He goes out.

  Joe Packet’s wife looks sympathetically at Mrs Hardcastle. “You must have been up very early,” she says, “if you came from Sydney this morning.”

  “Oh, yes,” says Mrs Hardcastle airily. “Mr Hardcastle likes to make an early start when he’s travelling. Even—well, even this morning.”

  “A special morning, my dear ?” asks the sympathetic wife of Joe Packet.

  “Oh, no,” says Mrs Hardcastle. “Oh, nothing special.” Is it, she wonders. Is it? What have I done? He’s so rough, he’s so burly; blundering through life like a footballer.

  “I wonder,” says the sympathetic lady, leaning towards her and dangling a little trumpery necklace of bright flowers made from dough, “I wonder if you’d like to help me with my good work. These are for the Red Cross.”

  Joe Packet’s wife does not look like a lady who sells things for the Red Cross. She has a long, ominous nose, which is piercing Mrs Hardcastle in the bosom; she has a cold, glittering black eye which Mrs Hardcastle would prefer to see fixed on someone else; she has a stealthy, cat-like tread, which Mrs Hardcastle wishes would trans-port her out of the room. But Joe Packet’s wife does not move away from the breakfast table. She stands there still and ominous. “Oh,” says Mrs Hardcastle, “you sell them, do you ?”

  “For the Red Cross, my dear. Ten shillings.”

  Ten shillings. But Mr Hardcastle, strong, protective Mr Hardcastle, is not to be seen on the left of Joe Packet’s wife’s nose, nor on the right of her nose. If only she will go away.

  Mrs Hardcastle fumbles in her purse.

  “Thank you, my dear,” says the woman. “Now would you like another little necklace? Pretty, aren’t they? Or some earrings? For the Red Cross.”

  “I think,” says Mrs Hardcastle desperately, “that will be enough for just now. Perhaps some other time. When we come back. I think,” says Mrs Hardcastle bravely, “I’ll just pay for the breakfasts now and then we can be on the road.”

  “Another ten shillings, my dear,” says the lean wife of Joe Packet.

  Ten shillings for bacon and eggs! But Mrs Hardcastle pays it. Shall she face the fox again? She must find Mr Hardcastle and go.

  But Mr Hardcastle is not outside by the garage door, where the red fox grins at his wife. Joe Packet has him in the store.

  “Packet’s my name,” says Joe Packet, “and Packet’s my nature. Ham, Mr Hardcastle, eh? You’ll want it for the trip. I’ll pack it.” Swift and light in his movements, swift and fluent in his speech.

  “Ha!” roars Mr Hardcastle happily, “you want to pack me the whole blasted shop.”

  “The old red fox, he’s dead, eh?” says Joe Packet. “He’s finished, that one. But you and I, we live. Hey, Mr Hardcastle, we live—and while we live we eat.”

  “You got any salmon?” asks Mr Hardcastle. “Put it in.”

  “Three tins,” says Joe, chuckling. “Four tins. We’ll make it four. The old red salmon, he swims in the sea no more.” He’s a hard case, is Joe; his face all wrinkled with laughter, and his upper lip lifted at the corner in a permanent grin that shows a yellow fang.

  “What the hell will I ever do with four tins of salmon?” Mr Hardcastle joyously bellows.

  “You’re going to Melbourne. With a lady. You take a week for the journey. You eat by the roadside. Plenty, to keep your strength up.”

  “Put ’em in then, put ’em in,” says Mr Hardcastle. “To keep my strength up.” (Bark.)

  Joe laughs. Square head lifted off his chest again, thrown back, and the high whinnying laugh shooting up, it seems, at the tins of biscuits on the top shelf. His hands hold his belly in.

  “Right!” says Joe. “Now then. Fruit, chocolates, cigarettes, what else does the lady like? Biscuits! Gingernuts, wafers—no, chocolate fingers.” He climbs a ladder to the top shelf. Force of habit alone prevents his blue dungarees from slipping off.

  Mrs Hardcastle is astounded. The pile of foodstuffs and groceries. Simply squandering money. And him, of all people! What would he say if he knew about the ten shillings for the necklace and the other ten shillings for breakfast?

  Why, at the moment, he, Mr Hardcastle, shrewd, tough, tight-fisted managing director of a factory, he would say nothing at all. How curious; curious. What have he and Joe Packet been saying to each other while they stared at the old dead dog-fox? What male jokes have they cracked? She knows. She knows. The three jolly foxes together.

  But here comes that woman behind her; the long, sharp nose is making a hole in her spine. “Oh, come,” says Mrs Hardcastle to her husband. “We must go.”

  Joe Packet slithers down the ladder.

  “Yes,” says Mr Hardcastle. “In a minute.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a lovely journey,” says the wife of Joe.

  “I think,” says Mrs Hardcastle to her husband, “I’ll sit in th
e car and wait for you. Don’t be long.” She looks down, over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses, at Mrs Packet, who is not now some sliding, sinister animal, but, because Mrs Hardcastle is departing, merely the avaricious wife of a storekeeper. “Good-bye,” trills Mrs Hardcastle sarcastically as she goes out the door. “I do hope you bring lots of success to the Red Cross.”

  Mrs Packet smiles, her long flickering upper lip, with its faint black moustache, disclosing very small white teeth, like a fish’s. Such a repellent-looking woman!

  “Quick, then,” says Joe. “Three at one and two is three and nine, the biscuits two and sevenpence, salmon, pears, three tins of peaches, chocolates, say two shillings, no half a crown, ham, chicken paste, loaf of bread sevenpence, then there’s the cigarettes; look here, Mr Hardcastle, I’ll throw in a packet of matches; now that’s two pounds ten the lot. And no charge at all for looking at the old red fox.”

  “Ha!” laughs Mr Hardcastle. “I know who’s the old red fox. Two pounds ten!”

  “But isn’t it worth it?” said Joe. “Life is worth it! Picnics by the road are worth it. You and me, we know, Mr Hardcastle. You’re only old once.” His whinnying laughter.

  “Two pounds ten, then,” says Mr Hardcastle, a little sadly, for, after all, money is money.

  “And ten shillings for the breakfasts, don’t forget,” says Mrs Packet, her long nose entering the conversation.

  “Three quid,” says Joe. “Three jolly old quid the lot.”

  Mr Hardcastle pays him. “I’ll tell you what,” he says, “that damned old foxskin won’t be worth a cracker to you, anyhow. You saw the holes where the ticks had got into it.”

  “Never mind about that,” says Joe. “We’ll find a use for him somehow. He was a good fox in his day. Good-bye Mr Hardcastle.”

  As Mr Hardcastle drives off Joe Packet waves, and the red fox, on the garage door, is grinning.

  “I thought we’d never get away,” says Mrs Hardcastle, looking back from the bend in the road at the store by Fat Chow Creek. “Those awful people. They robbed us.”

  “I told you they’d do pretty well there,” Mr Hardcastle answers. “Three quid they got out of me. Well, it was worth it.”