by Miller, Alex
He wondered what they would have said anyway. He would only have been finding out from her where her mother was. He had expected to see Ida at the fights.
He took a deep breath and looked around; the hall, the rides and the boxing marquee were the only places that were lit up. His energy was unused. He felt restless and aggrieved. Maybe he would go in again for the presentations after all. Why not? He had won. A golden eagle! What had Ida said? ‘They give stupid golden eagles to the winners.’ He could see her now, in her swimming togs, standing on the rock ledge after she had rescued him, looking shiny and vibrant, the sun in her eyes.
She was probably in the hall right at this minute, with her hair gathered on top of her head, wearing her country woman’s dress and organising something. He made up his mind to go across and look in, just to confirm that she really was there. To see her. That’s all. Perhaps he would somehow find the courage to remind her of how they had rolled about together in the water almost naked. And as he reminded her he would watch her reaction closely. The fact that she had not come to see him fight and that he had chosen not to smash Hill seemed to bear a significance for them both. He wanted an acknowledgement of this. The noise in the boxing tent behind him was increasing again, the last fight was coming to an end. Waterhouse would be doing the presentations any minute. Crofts moved out of the shadows of the boxing marquee and made his way towards the lighted doorway of the hall.
part two
five
Ward Rankin sat at his desk in the room he had made his own in the middle of the house. There was a pen in his right hand and a glass of whiskey at his elbow. He was re-reading for the tenth time some numbered notes he had been making on a pad in front of him. A cigarette burned steadily in a glass ashtray. He had not started the generator and the bulb was dimming then brightening in response to the irregular flow of current from the storage batteries. It was almost three in the morning.
They had arrived back from Springtown over an hour ago and the house was now quiet and settled around him. He had not planned to stay up. He was certain he would not sleep and had come in for a drink and to be alone for a while before going to bed—his head had been aching and when he had got out of the car his skin felt slightly irritated all over. Once alone he decided that he would try to settle something. It seemed to the station owner that for some time he had been compiling a mental dossier on Robert Crofts’ character. He felt as though there were a great many facts concerning aspects of his behaviour that could easily be verified and which, in their totality, indicated a disturbing conclusion.
Rankin was worried. He wanted to feel convinced he was being balanced about this. He wanted to stand back and take a considered look at the basis for his anxieties. His guilt, however, was complicating this process for him. After handing Crofts over to the Hills he had indulged in a subtle plan. Now he was pretending he had never devised any such plan. This was not such a difficult thing because the plan had never had any details: he had visualised himself ‘rescuing’ Crofts from his defeat at the hands of Laurie Hill and ‘carrying’ him off to a gentle place for recuperation. For a little while—from the conversation with Waterhouse in the pub until about halfway through round two of Crofts’ fight—it had been a very exciting and secret idea. He had savoured the idea of Crofts being in his care; somehow from then on their relationship would at last be graced with understanding, perhaps even with respect and a degree of attraction.
He had watched the stockman defeating Laurie Hill with a complex mixture of feelings that amounted in the end to dismay and resentment. He had not known what to say to him afterwards. Incapable of congratulating him, he had felt awkward, ridiculous and bitterly offended in a way he could not hope to justify. Gil had been celebrating vigorously and Alistair had stayed close—like a gloomy personification of his own fears. Rankin had never felt so publicly defeated.
He reached for his glass and swallowed a large draught of the neat liquor, then took a long pull on the last of the cigarette. When he had been unlacing the stockman’s gloves Crofts had measured him with a look that had revealed his desire to assault him. He was certain of it. He could still ‘see’ it. When Crofts had left the tent, he had been left with the memory of that look. It justified his resentment and his alarm. He had clung to it and had begun at once to enumerate his suspicions.
At the top of the page on the pad in front of him he had written: 1) From the very beginning, although I only saw it after a while, changing everything around to erase the Rankins’ history here. He didn’t like the word history, it wasn’t the word he wanted, but he left it there nevertheless because it was more inclusive than a word like mark. He did not want to seem to be making anything up or to be idiosyncratic in these notes. In the back of his mind lay the thought that there might be an audience for them. They were therefore not absolutely candid. He had finished this entry with: This didn’t alarm me it just irritated me at first. Looking back, however, I see he set about it with such a will that there must have been a motive behind it. Below this he had left a space and had written: 2) Intentionally discarding a valuable edition of Gulliver’s Travels in a way that was clearly meant to insult me because he must have known his action would be reported to me by and here he had at first written Alistair and then crossed this out and written the children, before continuing: A real affront this and nothing imagined about it. Anyone would be angry. He had underlined Anyone twice and had deeply scored a black asterisk in the margin opposite 2). Following this was 3) Shooting Julia. After Julia he had placed a question mark which he had erased then replaced. Below this he had written and then crossed out: Why didn’t I confront him properly in the yards? He effaced this entry more thoroughly now, going over it with the biro until it could no longer be deciphered. Then he wrote: This incident is too old now to be revived. But he did actually do it and so it must count against him for something. Rankin was aware that there were flaws to his reasoning but he went on anyway as if there weren’t.
There were two more entries after the last cramped amendment: 4) Hanging back on his own and firing off a shot from the .303 dangerously in the direction of the swimming camp and when asked what he had been firing at replying in a vague and unsatisfactory way. Then later the same day returning alone to the house while we were all at the swimming hole and searching my room, taking my Colt and firing six unexplained shots in a strange way. A large question mark followed this entry. He wrote now: How am I supposed to interpret such ‘messages’ except as threats? There is a doubt about the Colt which I shall clear up by asking him a direct question. If he says he didn’t do it I shall bring the rest of the household together and expose his lie. Then sack him at once. The last sentence had been crossed through lightly.
The final entry on the page had been written and re-written a number of times. It was a mess. The surviving versions of it were: Looking at me after the fight as if he wanted to kill me—Looking at me as if he intended hitting me—Looking at me as if he were thinking it would not take much to kill me—Letting me know by his look, so that I was the only one to know it, that he had something unpleasant in store for me. This was all done so cunningly between us that I have no way of proving it even though there were others present. He was becoming increasingly unhappy with this entry and tried: His look said it all, but crossed it through at once, writing instead: I didn’t imagine it. It was in his eyes.
Rankin stared at what he had written. His right eye was failing to focus properly so he half-closed it. He was very tired but still he did not get up and go to bed. He was conscious of leaving something out of these notes. What he could not sort out was this: had the stockman rescued him from the earth tank or had he driven him into it? What strange beguiling force had made him feel rescued rather than threatened? There was the blazing fear, the excitement and the great uplifting glow of being carried naked in Crofts’ powerful embrace . . .
Rankin got up and carefully refilled his glass from the bottle on the sideboard. He had seen the way Cr
ofts had coldly, almost ritually, bashed Laurie Hill and then let him hang on the edge of defeat. Doing it with his humourless English reliability as if it were another of the tidying-up jobs around the place, as if he were clearing rubbish.
He sat down at the desk once more but he did not look again at his notes. He knew what he would do. He would give the stockman an ordinary job that would fully occupy his working day and then see how things developed from there. It was simple, all he had to do was treat Crofts like an ordinary station hand and any odd behaviour would stand out.
He got up, collected his notes and locked them in a drawer. He switched off the light and went to his bedroom. He was weary but satisfied with his solution. The grey of early morning was visible in the sky. He felt a great relief that after all he would not have to get rid of Crofts altogether—he would not have to contemplate the possibility of being trapped here alone with his wife and son for ever. As he took off his clothes and climbed into his bed he said quietly to himself, ‘I’ll test him.’ And he smiled as he slid at once into a deep dream-filled sleep that took him back to his childhood where nothing yet was settled.
Beyond the western wall of the room that Ward Rankin had just left and across the passage, its doors open to the night air at either end, Ida lay on her bed watching the reflection of the pre-dawn sky in her tilted mirror.
When Crofts had walked into the Springtown hall she had known at once how right she had been not to go to his fight. She had not asked him if he had won or lost. It had happened without words: the realisation that they trusted each other. He had offered to help with the supper arrangements and they had worked side by side among the other people. Every now and then they had looked up and smiled at each other, enjoying the intense privacy of their new understanding. That was all.
A faint eucalypt scent, which had gathered during the day along the creek, drifted now through the house as the air stirred before the dawn. She thought of him less than a hundred yards away in his quarters—which she had never seen—and wondered if he were lying awake too. She would ask him at breakfast if he had smelled the gum trees, and they would both know what was meant by the question. Whatever else, they would be friends—she could not bring herself to imagine them becoming lovers. It was too much to consider now that it had become a possibility, it was too big a break with the way she had led her life until now.
There would be no need to offer resistance to anything, she assured herself. And from down the track beyond the stockman’s hut she heard the rooster crow.
•
Dressed only in his pyjama shorts Gil came out onto the verandah and stood gazing through into the kitchen where Ward Rankin, freshly showered and dressed, was making toast and frying bacon. The radio was much louder than usual. An operatic duet.
‘How many rashers?’ Rankin shouted above the music.
Gil went into the kitchen and stood frowning at the radio. Rankin sang snatches of the song, in tune.
‘Where’s the Eno?’ Gil growled.
Gradually the others drifted out sleepily, roused by the music and the smell of frying bacon. Rankin made breakfast for each of them. It was Tuesday, and Gil would be returning to Gympie on Thursday. He wanted to go pig hunting today. No one seemed interested in his plans.
‘Robert’ll be in it,’ Gil said.
‘Robert’s going to be too busy for pig hunting today,’ the station owner said cheerfully, and everyone looked at him. He wiped up the last of his egg with a piece of toast and washed it down with coffee.
Ida said evenly, ‘But today is a holiday, surely.’
‘Not officially,’ Rankin replied without looking at her, lighting a cigarette and getting up from the table. He went out through the screen door and down the steps. The duet was reaching its embattled climax. Gil got up and turned it off. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. The skin around his right eye was purple and swollen.
Robert Crofts woke from a dreamless sleep and stared at the grey tin of the unlined ceiling above him. It was stifling in the hut and he realised it must be very late. Habit prompted him to get up at once, but as he swung his legs over the side of the bed he checked himself and lay down again. Suddenly the idea of physical work seemed to him repulsive—in fact, he found it hard to imagine ever being enthusiastic about such work again.
He put his hand up to his cheek. It was tender and puffy. His body ached all over as if each one of his muscle fibres had been stretched to its limit. It was not an unpleasant sensation, but it made lying down seem a desirable and luxurious thing to do.
He began to plan his day. He must see her alone, not up at the house with all the others hanging around, but down here on the path where he could really look at her and see again the expression in her eyes. They could stare at each other for a while. He would lie here until she came by to collect the eggs. A while later he heard someone moving around in the grass outside and his heart jumped. He got up and went on to the verandah. Ward Rankin was filling the dogs’ bowls with water from a plastic bucket. He and the two dogs looked up as the stockman emerged.
‘Good morning, Robert. How’s the bruise?’ Rankin asked and turned away, starting back up the path towards the shed and calling over his shoulder, ‘I’ll see you over here in a minute.’
The stockman watched Ward Rankin walking away then went back into the hut and put his shirt on. By the time the station owner had given him his orders and the stockman was having breakfast over at the house she was downstairs in the shower. He tried lingering but Rankin hurried him along, almost as if he suspected something. Gil came down to the truck with him afterwards and said he would be up the creek looking for pigs later and would stop by for a chat. He remarked that Alistair would not be with him. He seemed unusually subdued.
The stockman drove away along the track in the International without having seen her. The job was just about the worst he had ever come across—another Ward Rankin fencing special, he thought, as soon as he saw it. He found it extraordinary that the station owner had really asked him to start on it today. He stood by the parked truck and surveyed the task that lay ahead of him. It would take him weeks. He was ten kilometres up the creek from the homestead at a point where the steep sides of the valley narrowed abruptly.
Twenty years ago Rankin had fenced off an alluvial flat here with the intention of irrigating lucerne. As with so many other projects he had begun, he had failed to follow up on this plan beyond fencing and ploughing the stretch. The black wattle and dogwood had claimed the flat years ago. Each autumn, when they brought the freshly mustered herd down, calves would find their way in to the enclosure through holes in the wire and would be unable to get out again. Their mothers would get upset and it would take hours to sort out the confusion before they could proceed to the yards. Rankin had been threatening for years to dismantle the tangle of entrapments he had created.
Crofts walked over and kicked one of the leaning posts—there was rabbit netting topped by two plain and one barbed wire enclosing almost twenty-five hectares. He was thoroughly disgusted. In this muggy heat it was a sentence of hard labour. Why? He kicked the post again and suddenly it struck him how bright-eyed and glittery Rankin had been this morning—all juiced up on that mad brigalow energy again no doubt.
He turned his back on the fence and walked away from it. He could not bring himself to touch it at the moment. He strolled on down the track some way, following its meanderings among the great ironbarks. Rankin had packed him a lunch. He scarcely hesitated before going back to the truck for it. He would do no work today. The decision occurred to him without warning and gave him a heady feeling of release; he was surprised that he had never thought of doing this before. ‘I’ve lost my fascination with old wire,’ he explained to the air around him and laughed. He would find a good spot by the creek, have a bath and sunbathe, and he would think of Ida. He yearned for rest and for luxury. The feeling was new to him and he savoured the pleasure of it. Walking past the wattles towards the creek with his lunch he made an i
mpatient noise at the thought of the insect-ridden sweaty horror of struggling with tons of overgrown and entangled fence in there. The idea that he should be sentenced to such an activity seemed beyond all reason.
He found a rock ledge by the bank of the creek that offered both sunlight and shade and which overlooked a deep clear pool where he could see a fat jewfish swimming slowly in wide circles. He took off his clothes and left them with his lunch in the shade and he lay naked on his stomach overlooking the pool. The sun burned his back as he watched the placid black fish patrolling its territory. While he watched the fish he tried to recall in detail the expression he had seen in Ida Rankin’s eyes last night when they had been working side by side in the hall. It had inspired in him a thousand questions. How had she survived, he wondered, all those years with Ward Rankin?
Later in the day, when the rays of the sun had grown fierce and he had swum and had eaten his corned beef sandwiches, he retreated into the deep shade at the back of the ledge. With his clothes for a pillow, he lay down on the smooth rock, and after a while went to sleep.
The stockman was woken by a voice calling his name. He sat up and listened, amazed that he was out here by the creek and not in his own bed. He was about to lie down again, to return to his dreams, when he heard Gil Sturgiss calling to him from up near the truck. He was heavy with sleep and he considered remaining hidden. But he thought how stupid he would appear if Gil were to come in search of him, so he called out. A moment later Gil came down the track, leading a horse, his rifle slung over his shoulder, wearing his wide hat and his cowboy boots. He looked irritable and hot.
Gil tethered his horse, came over to the rock and sat down. He talked slowly for a while about Gympie and himself. Then in the middle of a sentence he said, ‘It’s been a funny old Christmas,’ and he tossed a stone into the pool, startling the fish. Crofts said nothing. Gil asked him a few questions about England, but neither of them cared enough about the subject to keep a conversation going. Crofts asked Gil if he had shot any pigs and when Gil said he hadn’t they let that drop too. After they had sat in silence for some time Gil said, ‘If you’re ever down round Gympie don’t forget to come and see us,’ and he got up.