Cane Music

by Joyce Dingwell

  “Certainly,” he agreed with a yawn. “After all, there’s no need to toughen you up, you won’t be there long.”

  “Where?”

  “North, of course, latitude between nineteen and twenty. For that’s where there are snakes.”

  “Where the baby is going!”

  “My reason for that spanking. She may never encounter a Joe Blake, but if she does, I don’t want her nursing it. Why in heaven she did, I don’t know, unless...” he was silent for a moment. “Most people, even infants,” he went on presently, “find them instinctively repulsive.”

  “I think I can explain that. At the hospital we had a pet carpet snake to keep down vermin. Everyone loved old Bill.”

  “But how would Belinda meet him?”

  “How?” Roslyn paused. How, indeed! There had been barely a week pass than Belinda had been taken with Roslyn to one of the wards, or to visit Matron, or to see someone on the Board, or—

  “Naturally as a young child she would have been in hospital for some little ailment or other,” she said weakly, “and you know how children are.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There she would have met Bill,” Roslyn finished almost in an apologetic whisper. She became aware of his burning glance, burning right into her, and pulling back her plate she began to eat hurriedly.

  “Ease up,” he advised, “or you’ll be walking the floor all night with dyspepsia, not hallucinations.” He went to the servery hatch and came back with two coffees.

  “Are there really that many snakes up there?” she asked.

  “It’s sub-tropical, so what do you expect? But no, not really. They come out of the cane when we burn the grass to get rid of the trash, but you still could go years and never see one.”

  “Then it’s just as well Belinda learned the lesson now,” Roslyn had the good grace to concede.

  “And you? Did you learn it?”

  “Not to nurse a snake? I wouldn’t have, anyway.”

  “Not to interfere. After all, the child is nothing to you.” His eyes were narrowed.

  “She’s my charge for several weeks.”

  “Of which one week will be up, or nearly up, by the time we get home.”

  Home. For the first time Roslyn faced up to the fact that in the near future Northern Queensland was to be Belinda’s home. Why was he asking for her, that crotchety old sugar magnate, why was Mr. Moreno saying those time-old words (with the appropriate name prefix jn this instance) saying: “Belinda, come home.” Home was not up there, home was down in the Riverina with someone who loved and understood the child. An old man would not understand, and certainly his stand-in was cut out for cane-cutting, not for—And yet Mrs. Maddison had said “fatherly”. She, Roslyn, had even fleetingly had that impression herself.

  “Belinda, come back!” the man called across the room, for Belinda was getting ready to follow the other children outside.

  Belinda, come home! Roslyn cried within herself.

  She cried a little in bed that night, and though she took care to do it softly because of Belinda, his sharp ears must have heard, because soon after there were noises in the small kitchen that was included with the unit, and presently he handed in a cup of tea.

  “It’s either indigestion, night starvation or snake nerves,” he said, “but tea cures all—or so they say where I come from. We’re great on the old cuppa.”

  “Thank you.” She could not see him in the dark, he was just a blur. She drank down the tea, then drifted off.

  They left after breakfast, hit west again to avoid Brisbane, then began the trek north. Now the distances between towns became much greater. Tall miles for a tail state, the man beside Roslyn drawled. He added not to expect too much in accommodation for a while.

  “If we went by the coast road—”

  “We’re going by the inner roads. Less traffic. Traffic is a big hazard, and Mr. Moreno wants his cargo delivered in good order.”

  “What for?” Roslyn had the temerity to ask.

  “The housekeeper, Mrs. Maddison, had her own answer,” he said, looking expressionlessly at Roslyn. “Really?”

  “Really. It was milking and weeding.”

  “But would there be cows?” innocently.

  “There are weeds,” was all he replied. He was still looking expressionlessly at her.

  “She’s too young yet.”

  “She’ll grow out of that.”

  “You—you disgust me!” snapped Roslyn.

  “Better than boring you, you must agree. Is that a motel sign on the right?”

  “It’s earlier than two fingers from sunset.”

  “Nonetheless we’ll take it, it could be miles before anything else offers.” He drew up the car at a rambling conglomeration of rooms, all except one with a vehicle parked in front of it, proclaiming occupation. She watched him as he sought out the office.

  When he came back he was jingling a key. He wore a half-grin.

  “Lucky?” she asked.

  “That depends.”

  “Depends? Depends on what?”

  “On how you look at it.”

  “Look at the rooms?”

  “Room. One room. There’s no other accommodation left.”

  “Then we’ll drive on.”

  “It’s a hundred and fifty miles to the next place, and it could be completely full, so we stop here.”

  “But how?”

  “We don’t know until we see it, do we?” he shrugged. He parked the car in front of the last remaining unit, got out, put the key in the door, then opened up.

  “Oh, no!” Roslyn, not far behind him, protested.

  Though she had been annoyed when he had corrected room of her rooms, she had not been—well, apprehensive. She knew these country motels, invariably the units were large, and offering a positive dormitory of cots. Already in her mind she had erected a blanket curtain between his bed, then hers and Belinda’s. But how could you erect a curtain when there was only—one bed!

  Certainly it was a very large bed. King size, she believed they called them, but it was still—one bed.

  “Didn’t you tell them?” she cried in exasperation.

  “Tell whom?”

  “The motel people.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “Don’t be a fool!” She saw that Belinda was watching and listening, so lowered her voice. “Didn’t you tell them our position?”

  “They got in first, they said take it or leave it.”

  “You should have left it,” she said angrily.

  “Look, Miss Young, I’m tired, I’ve been at the wheel since eight this morning and it hasn’t been an easy road. I have no intention of going any further without a rest.”

  “I doubt,” she said coldly, “if you’ll rest well in the car.”

  “I won’t be resting in the car.”

  “Then on the floor. In the bath.”

  “I’ll be sleeping on this side of this very large bed, you will be sleeping on the other side. Between us, as firm as the walls of Jericho, will be our small chaperone Belinda.”

  “Jericho fell.” Roslyn heard herself say it and could have bitten her tongue out. He had only chosen Jericho to bait her.

  But if he had, he wasn’t following it up. “The walls won’t fall tonight,” he promised, “I’m dead on my feet.”

  “It just won’t do,” she persisted.

  “Please yourself.” He lay down on his indicated side of the bed and pronounced: “Quite comfy.”

  They had eaten at a diner further south, so there was nothing to do save bathe and sleep.

  Roslyn attended to the baby, then encased her in pink flannelette prior to slipping her into the hateful bed.

  He was lying back watching the procedure, for instead of taking Belinda into the adult shower annexe, Roslyn had filled a basin with warm water and put it down on a towel on the unit floor. “They clean up well, don’t they?” he approved of Belinda’s rosy little body.

  Roslyn di
d not answer.

  “Are you showering next?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll see if I clean up well, too,” he grinned, and went to the annexe.

  She was busy unpacking a case when he came out again ... or at least she made herself busy. She must have overdone it, for he said: “Oh, come off it, Sister Young, you must have seen a man in pyjamas before.”

  “In my line of duty, yes.”

  “Then I can assure you that off duty we’re still the same. Beneath this neck-to-ankle flannel breathes a body similar to the bodies you’ve no doubt prepared many times for the op shop.”

  “We call it the theatre. Also, all this is too preposterous.”

  “Then keep your mulling to yourself, I’m hitting the hay.”

  Belinda was already sound asleep. She lay dead in the middle of the very large bed making little possum snores through her button nose. Roslyn turned desperately to the bathroom.

  She showered ... and she showered ... and she showered. Then she began it all over again.

  But she couldn’t keep it up for ever, there could be a water shortage and the proprietor come knocking at the door. Or the next-door unit might complain at the noise.

  She came out of the hot spray red, exhausted and too weak from heat to dry herself properly. Thank heaven she had brought utilitarian nightwear. Not that it mattered; she had no intention in the world of climbing into that bed.

  She stood for a long while in the ablution annexe, and would probably have stood longer, but the light suddenly went out. It must be a local plant and only geared to a certain hour. Now she would have to emerge.

  She tiptoted into the room. Would she go out to the car and coil up there? No, he had locked it, and she would have to find the key, and probably, as most men did, he would have pushed it to the very bottom of a pocket, and getting it out again would make a noise.

  The floor, then. If you were tired you would sleep anywhere, they said. But was she tired enough to sleep on a coconut mat?

  Perhaps she could sit up on a chair all night, you did that in trains and thought nothing of it.

  Then suddenly she was moving wearily to the bed, too sick of the subject to think about it any longer. Anyway, they both were asleep now, she could hear the different depths of breathing, the baby’s shallow rise and fall. His.

  How dark it was! Unlike most motels there was no outside light. Well, all the better not to see you, Father Bear, Roslyn yawned. She slipped under the sheet, noting indulgently that baby Belinda had not left her much room, in fact barely eighteen inches. Poor wee pet, she must be very tired. She put her hand lovingly on the pillow above the sleeping head. Later on she would gently edge Belinda further to the middle, bless her.

  ... Later on proved daylight.

  Roslyn opened her eyes and saw her hand still resting protectively above a pillow, but on the pillow was not Belinda’s head ... but his. No wonder she had thought Belinda had left her little space last night; in the obscurity she had climbed into the wrong side of the bed. She had clambered into his side.

  There he stretched beside her, still asleep, thank heaven, blessedly unconscious, dead to the world ... but there.

  Roslyn edged carefully out and made for the shower annexe again. Shutting the door, she leaned against it and said: “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no!”

  Through chinks in his closed eyelids he watched her go. And grinned.

  “Two more sleeps,” he told Belinda as they hit the road again, “then home.”—Belinda, come home. Roslyn. heard it ringing inside her, and turned her glance away.

  Once more they were avoiding the big cities. After the soft green of the hinterland mountains, the red soil of the plains was like a brazen wave of a bright banner.

  “It will be like that from now on,” the driver told Roslyn, “red and more red—this is the red earth state.”

  “When does the cane begin?”

  “Any moment. Don’t be impatient, once you have it with you up here, you have it ad infinitum.”

  The tall grasses began that evening, just before he put up his estimating fingers at the sunset. Had she not been anxious about the night’s accommodation, Roslyn would have seen the first waves of a vast ocean of shining green.

  But the motel was her sole concern, and when it proved a modern one ... with two adjoining units ... she almost heaved a sigh of relief. Though she didn’t heave it, her face must have betrayed it.

  “You look as though you’ve exchanged a ton of coal for a couple of feathers,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You figure it out. Come on, baby.” He held out his arms to Belinda.

  Roslyn put the little girl down for a rest, then, remembering she had not written to Chris yet to tell him how she was progressing, and to thank him, she went down to the office to buy some stationery.

  But she didn’t buy it, so the letter was not written. Instead she stood at the office door, then quietly withdrew. It had been ridiculous not asking Mr. Moreno’s stand-in his name, but she hadn’t, partly out of obstinacy, and partly because a man like he was would undoubtedly tack the appropriate Tom, Dick or Harry in front of it, and even though they were now in the relaxed latitudes, or so he had frequently said, she had no intention of calling him by his Christian name. But she had never dreamed she would be calling him by that name. As Mr. Moreno.

  “Yes, Mr. Moreno,” the proprietor had been advising, “the road is fair right up to the turn-off.”

  Moreno. Moreno. So he was a Moreno. She should have guessed it, no outsider would have accepted the charge of transferring Belinda, or if they had they would not have done it so meticulously, so fastidiously; no outsider would have bothered to spank her to make a point. But someone connected would. Someone like—a father?

  She went back to her unit and sat on the bed beside Belinda, who had now dropped off. She studied the little girl’s features, though heaven knew she had no need to, she already knew every small curve by heart. But now she multiplied the size of the forehead, the mouth, the nose. She estimated the firm line from jaw to throat. Most of all she looked at the slight cleft in the rather pointed chin. He had a cleft.

  No! Roslyn said it aloud, and Belinda half-stirred.

  Nanette had never spoken much about her husband, she had only spoken of old Crotchety. Roslyn had not probed, naturally thinking there might be some pain there. After all, Nanette had been young, barely older than Roslyn was herself, and there was no love like young love.—Or was there?

  For instance, had Nanette’s husband not died at all? Had there been a divorce instead? Again, had there been no marriage, only a child? A child named Belinda?

  Whatever the answer was, one thing remained obvious, and Roslyn, unaware, began working herself up to a deep anger.

  Death, divorce, nothing at all, the baby is still unmistakably a Moreno, was what she was thinking, once more noting the likeness, and now she’s going to a family who, only on second thoughts, have decided to accept her. Oh, I know that he ... that that person ... said that Nanette was being paid all along, but I have only his word for it—and anyway, what’s payment compared to love and belonging? They’ve opened their doors now ... Belinda, come home ... but it should have been done years ago, it should have been in the beginning.

  It comes inevitably to this, Roslyn went on in her inflamed mind, that Nanette was either discarded before or after marriage, and in my book neither one of these discards is worse than the other. Poor Nanette, but poorer still, my darling little girl. Oh, Belinda, if I only could I’d take you away right now!

  “Dinner,” he called through the door, “and as you come out, look to the west at the sun on the cane.”

  She wakened and sponged Belinda and the two of them went along to the dining room where he was waiting.

  “Did you see it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “The cane.”

  “No.”

  His brows lifted, but he did not comment. Ap
art from Belinda’s small prattle, they ate in silence.

  “One more sleep after tonight, Belinda,” he said at the finish of the meal, “then home.” He had picked her up from her high chair and for a few moments the two faces were close together ... and they were the same face.

  “So you’re a Moreno,” Roslyn said as she walked beside him back to the unit.

  “Of course, ma’am. What else?”

  “There are lots else.”

  “Not where I come from.”

  “The big estate, you mean.”

  “Well, if not there, then other Moreno fields.” He glanced obliquely at her. “Want to know the first handle?”

  “First handle?” she queried.

  “My Christian name.”

  “No.”

  “Please yourself,” he shrugged, “but up there we use first handles.”

  “I won’t,” she assured him.

  He shrugged again. “Then I’m Mr. M. Moreno,” he informed her, “which means precisely nothing, since there’s more than one M.” He paused, obviously still waiting for her to inquire, but she didn’t.

  It was not because she knew already what M stood for; she did not, since Nanette had never spoken of Belinda’s father by name.

  “Tom, Dick or Harry, it doesn’t interest me,” she dismissed.

  “They don’t start with M,” he reminded her, but apart from that, he did not say any more on the subject of names.

  It was dark now. She had noticed that night came quicker up here, almost instant night. She half-glanced to the west for the first cane that she had missed, but could see nothing.

  “Not to worry,” he advised, “as I said, the cane’s with you now, like it or not. Goodnight, Miss Young.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Moreno.”

  At first the next day, Roslyn could see nothing remarkable about the tall grasses that shut in their road so that they could see nothing on either side of them, only the track ahead. She cried out in dismay at cottages so built-in with cane that living in them must have been like living in a green canyon.

  “They don’t mind,” M. Moreno shrugged. “Every stick of cane means something extra in the pocket. That lot there is what’s called a ratoon crop, it has shot up from stumps. It’s a cheaper method but gives a poorer yield. It returns a lower crop per acre.”