by Alex Miller
PRAISE FOR JOURNEY TO THE STONE COUNTRY
‘A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line.’—Nicholas Shakespeare, author of The Dancer Upstairs
‘The most impressive and satisfying novel of recent years. It gave me all the kinds of pleasure a reader can hope for.’ —Tim Winton
PRAISE FOR CONDITIONS OF FAITH
‘This is an amazing book. The reader can’t help but offer up a prayerful thank you: Thank you, God, that human beings still have the audacity to write like this.’ —Washington Post
‘I think we shall see few finer or richer novels this year . . . a singular achievement.’—Andrew Riemer, Australian Book Review
PRAISE FOR THE ANCESTOR GAME
‘A wonderful novel of stunning intricacy, and great beauty.’—Michael Ondaatje
‘Extraordinary fictional portraits of China and Australia.’—New York Times Book Review
PRAISE FOR THE SITTERS
‘Elegant yet compassionate, austere yet profoundly human.’—Veronica Brady, Australian Book Review
‘Like Patrick White, Miller uses the painter to portray the ambivalence of art and the artist.’ —Simon Hughes, The Sunday Age
ALEX MILLER was born in London, where he spent the first fifteen years of his life. At the age of seventeen he migrated alone to Australia. His work includes Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (1988); The Tivington Nott (1989), which won the Braille Book of the Year Award; The Ancestor Game (1992), which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Barbara Ramsden Award for best published book; The Sitters (1995), which was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award; Conditions of Faith (2000), which won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award; Journey to the Stone Country (2002), which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award; and his latest novel Prochownik’s Dream (2005). He writes full-time and lives in the Victorian country town of Castlemaine.
THE TIVINGTON
NOTT
Alex Miller
My thanks are due to the poet Kris Hemensley. During the early 1980s, in his occasional magazine H/EAR, Kris published some pieces of mine in which I referred to the Nott of Tivington. It was the enthusiastic response we received to these pieces that encouraged me to write this story.
This edition published in 2005
First published in Australia by Penguin Books Australia in 1993
First published in the United Kingdom by Robert Hale in 1989
Copyright © Alex Miller 1989
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Miller, Alex, 1936– .
The Tivington nott.
ISBN 1 74114 778 6.
eISBN 978 1 74269 725 3
I. Title.
A823.3
Typeset by Midland Typesetters
In loving memory of my mother and father
Alex Miller at 16 years, West Somerset Farm, 1953
Morris, the genuine West Country farm labourer
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The events in this book took place in 1952, more or less in the order in which I have related them, and the characters in the story are all based on the lives of real people—I have even used some of their real names. I was myself, then, the nameless youth at the centre of this narrative—that self-conscious imposter in the photograph on the facing page. I say imposter, because a comparison of my photograph with that of a genuine West Country farm labourer—the figure of Morris in the photograph below—will reveal my pose to have been not original and my own, but a copy merely of his authentic style. My half-smile is surely an admission of my awareness of the ironic potential of my situation. I was, after all, a boy from London, who successfully posed for two years as an Exmoor labourer. But it was a pose and, although it was not as easy to maintain as it might seem to have been from this distance in time, that is all it was. It did not last. Eventually I became a novelist, who is another kind of poseur. As a novelist, I have been not so much a liar as a re-arranger of facts. That is the kind of writer I am. The purely imaginary has never interested me as much as the actualities of our daily lives, and it is of these that I have written. Although this story may not be autobiography in the conventional sense, it is nevertheless deeply self-revealing of its author. All the episodes, not just a few of them, may be traced back to actual events and experiences in my life, and in the lives of the people, and of some of the animals, portrayed here. There was such a stag as the Tivington nott, a horse such as Kabara, a cocky Australian who owned him, a farmer for whom I laboured for two years and who had rightly earned the nickname, ‘Tiger’, a labourer by the name of Morris with whom I lived, a harbourer who would know himself in the figure of Grabbe, and a huntsman of the Devon and Somerset who broke his neck while chasing a hind one winter afternoon. I loved them all, and loved the landscape they inhabited. Briefly, they were my reality.
Alex Miller
Castlemaine 2005
The doctor told Morris yesterday that he shouldn’t eat so much raw pig fat. It would probably kill him before he was forty. But it is the staple diet of labouring people in this locality. Morris is not from here originally, though his wife is—her parents eke out an abandoned existence in a decaying stone cottage up behind Monksilver in a sunless cleft of the moor; a situation that gives me the creeps. Morris is a native of the open downs of Wiltshire. Boarding with him, he has become my friend. His uncle, Tiger Westall, tenants this place and Morris serves him honestly, but is his own man despite that.
Even though he is a real grinder I did not mind working for the Tiger. He is not just an uncomplicated farmer. His hard good sense about managing the farm deserts him when it comes to the matter of hunting the wild red deer on Exmoor. He fears this passion as a disability and is forever guarding himself against it. Everything he does is complicated for him by this duality in his nature. He tried to get me to address him as ‘Master’ when I first came here from London two years ago. It is the tradition and Morris abides by it. I respect traditions and have one or two of my own. One of them is not calling people ‘Master’. I could see how much it meant to the Tiger to have me conform, however, so I did have a go at it, just to be fair. But it was no good. I couldn’t look him in the eye and say it. I wasn’t being stubborn. There was more to it than that.
He carries a hawthorn stick—even when he has a weighty four-gallon bucket of hot pig mash in each hand he carries this stick, jammed under his armpit. On this occasion he considered using it as a weapon—he was not accustomed to arguing with labourers. But I am a glutton for hard work and he had seen enough of that to make him hesitate before giving me a thump and firing me straight off the place. Also, there was this other complicating matter that I was not aware of then.
So, we’re standing here in the
yard confronting each other.
‘I won’t be calling you Master,’ I say.
Morris is interested. But he keeps carrying forkfuls of hay across from the yard-rick to the cowshed, discreetly observing developments between me and the Tiger.
And Tiger’s wife too. Watching the Master straightening out the boy, stationed in the doorway of the dairy—her kitchen. Vigilant, round and fat and all in white with tiny black eyes peering out. Keyed up. Trouble on her doorstep. Ready to make a stand over this. She’s been expecting it, looking for it—boys from London cannot be trusted! She’d like to see the Tiger chase me off the place. My decision not to call him ‘Master’ is proof of what she’s been saying all along.
The Tiger in front of me, hunched up and tense, red in the face and gripping his hawthorn stick. Not sure how far my rebellion might go and ready to take a swipe if necessary. ‘You will treat me with respect, boy, or I shall hunt you this minute!’
Serious about it!
‘I do respect you, Mr Westall. And if it suits you I will call you Boss.’ My polite offer takes him by surprise. Something new to think about. For maybe five or six seconds he crouches in front of me, holding on to his reaction—considering now where an advantage might lie. Then bang! he slams his stick against the corrugated tin of the bull pen and makes me jump half out of my skin.
‘Boss, eh?’
‘Yes.’
He’s delighted I jumped and he lets it sink in; keeping me in my place with fear. Then he brandishes his stick and turns away, heading for the dairy door and Mrs Roly-Poly; ‘Get on then, boy.’
It was too easy to call it a victory. That I owed him something for dropping ‘Master’ was a certainty.
But what I owed him only began to emerge with Kabara the black hunter.
Last April it was, and we’re on the point of a testing manoeuvre. One of my big chances to be a hero around this place. So of course I’m saying nothing. Keeping quiet. Slipping into the background and waiting for Morris to do the dirty work. He won’t complain. There’s a cow on heat and we’re about to release the bull from his solitary confinement.
When he’s not actually doing his business this two-and-a-half ton animal is secured by the neck with something like an anchor chain in a pen not much bigger than he is. Restless is not the word. He’s got the insane yellow eyes of a cornered cat. A killer if ever I saw one. Eaten up with soured energy. Spending his days and nights lunging from one end of the chain to the other, smashing his scarred horns into the steel framework that confines him. He’s on the look-out for vengeance!
Letting him out is like loosing a homicidal maniac for a spree. It’s always touch and go. The whole enterprise teetering on the brink of injury and destruction of property. A set-up looking for damage on a large scale.
So we prepare for it solemnly.
No mucking about or high spirits. No comic conspiracies between me and Morris against the Tiger. Everything tight. That’s the mood on these occasions—do the best we can then let fate take its course.
First we chain shut the gate to the main road. A sow once lifted this gate clean off its hinges and the bull would go through it without turning a hair. But we chain it shut all the same. It’s a ritual with us. Getting our courage up. Pretending we’re in control. Putting off the moment when Vern Diplomat V11 gets his taste of freedom.
I let the cow out from the stall into the small yard behind the milking shed and she stands there chewing, her brown eyes half closed. Then I go and open the gate through to her from the big yard, which the bull will have to cross. The Tiger meanwhile chaining the orchard gate.
Chains everywhere!
We’re almost ready. Roly-Poly observing from behind the upstairs curtains. Everything quiet down here in the yard except for the smash of those big horns on the buckled frame. He’s shifting from one foot to the other and letting out a bit of a moan every now and then.
We’re all set.
Me and the Tiger step back a bit and look at Morris.
I’ve got my pitchfork. Tiger’s got his stick. What a laugh! I’m supposed to guard the gate to the orchard in case the Diplomat decides to go off in that direction. Tiger will stand with his back to the dairy door, ready to bolt into the house should the bull head his way.
The bashing in the bull pen stops. We look at each other. The old boy must have caught a whiff of the proceedings. Silence for three seconds then he goes crazy, bellowing and moaning and hurling his great carcass around.
‘Let him out!’ the Tiger says, and he turns away, going for the dairy and safety. I look at his broad flat back and then I turn to Morris. Morris smiles and goes off to do his job. I could stick the Tiger with my pitchfork! Drive a steel prong through his tweed jacket and deep into his lung. Dig it in. See Roly-Poly come shrieking from the house. And dig her too! Something worse than her dread of all this. Be a mad bull myself. Go on a rampage! They don’t care if their nephew gets pulped in that pen.
I go over and take up my position by the gate.
I’m waiting.
I’m ready to make a run for it.
The yard is empty. Morris is in there. On his own with the bull and he’s stretching out on tiptoe over the horns trying to reach the release pin on the shiny steel chain—polished by the greases from the hide. A sudden swing of that loaded head and Morris will be crushed. But the Diplomat’s probably sitting back hard on the chain, keeping it stress-tight, rolling his sick eyes and choking on his tongue, fired up to go and break that cow’s back with one almighty thrust. Too lunatic to co-operate. Just wanting to jump her then smash everything in sight.
I’m waiting for him to come out.
And I feel certain that if I were to drive the steel tines of this pitchfork into his eyes I wouldn’t stop him. He’d just keep coming into the pressure. Something in his nature.
I look across to where Tiger is standing by the door. It’s too far to see the expression in his eyes. I know it anyway. Sullen at this point in case something goes wrong. Then he’ll go bright red in the face and start screaming abuse at Morris. Roly-Poly backing him up. Like a couple of maniac woodland trolls. The whole world conspiring against them. Morris a disloyal, useless nephew who should never have been given a job. And so on.
The moaning and choking is still going on in the pen.
I’m set to take off the minute things get out of hand. It’s a matter of personal survival. If Morris should fall under the bull when he comes careering out that door on to the cobbles I shan’t be rushing over to distract it. I’m not living in a land of heroes and legends.
Here he is! The huge red carcass slamming through the door! Going too fast to know where he is, and bigger than I remember him. He hesitates, then catches a whiff of the cow and away he goes, ploughing his way clean across the corner of the dung-heap, moaning and bellowing and spraying shit all over the yard. Morris after him, yelling and waving his arms, pretending to be doing the steering. But really this is all just a matter of hoping for the best. Letting nature take its course. Standing back and watching the miracle of procreation.
And he’s on her! Up on his hind legs and heaves one into her. Love at first sight.
It’s all over.
Now he’s looking around to rip one of us apart. He swings his head and hauls a two-hundredweight chunk off the dung-pile. Spoof! he whams it into the dairy wall. Shit everywhere. Then lets out a shriek as he spots Morris heading for him with an armful of sweet golden mangolds.
If it was up to me at this stage we’d all clear out. But Morris believes in seeing things through.
There has to be a better way of doing this.
The trick now is to lure the Diplomat back into his pen by leading him along a trail of mangolds. The idea being that if we can keep him busy gutsing himself he might forget to kill us all. I can’t believe he won’t catch on to this strategy sooner or later.
I must endure it while he inches his way back across the yard, lifting his head every step or two between bites and spr
aying some saliva around, keeping us in mind of what’s on for afters. Between shifts at laying the bait-trail, Morris—he’s doing all this on his own as me and the Tiger are frozen to our spots—slips into the pen and hangs up the chain so that Diplomat will put his head into the noose when he goes for his final titbit, a honeyed bowl of sugarbeet!
It’s really quite a nice day, if only I were free to enjoy it. The sun has come out and is warming me through my jacket. Not that I’m actually beginning to relax. I’m not doing that. But I am letting myself hope that the bull will go on doing the right thing. I can see the Tiger inching forward. Morris sees him too and waves him back. It’s too soon to rejoice. I’m staying still as a rock, letting my eyes roam around, keeping tabs on the scene. Watching that big slobbering mouth stuffing itself full of sweet pulp. And the Diplomat’s checking me every now and again. Making sure I’m not trying to sneak away.
It’s maybe another ten yards to the bull pen when this retired Australian army officer who lives about half a mile down the road from Morris’s cottage, at Gaudon Manor, Major Fred Alsop, jumps his stallion Kabara over the road gate into the yard.
I suppose he thought we’d be impressed with his horsemanship. After all, leaping from tarmac onto granite cobbles over a fixed gate at least four-foot-six high on a fiery stallion of around sixteen hands is a fairly out of the way thing to do round here in the middle of an ordinary working day. It’s unexpected.
There’s sparks actually flying out from the horse’s shoes where they’re slamming and sliding around and he’s practically through the bull before he can pull up. But there’s not a lot of control in it that I can see. And the horse doesn’t know what he’s jumped into. It’s not hard to tell. He’s confused and excited. Wondering what he’s supposed to be doing next.
That’s what we’re wondering too. We’re all assuming, I suppose, that Alsop has some plan of action that he’s about to carry out; and we stand there gaping, waiting for him to get on with it. The Diplomat as well. He’s taken by surprise like the rest of us. Half a dripping mangold hanging out of his mouth. Staring.