by Thea Astley
Lunt was praying for him when the horses came back.
The men came in without ceremony, riding-boots heavy on the veranda boards.
Barney Sweetman’s angel face loomed over Lunt where he sat beside the stretcher and five other faces glowed in the darkness beyond the lamp.
‘You bastard,’ Sweetman said. ‘You rotten bastard.’
Lunt said nothing. Buckmaster shoved through the door past a fringe of rifles.
‘What’s this then?’ he demanded, staring at the old man on the stretcher. ‘What the bloody hell is this, eh?’
‘Lower your voices,’ Lunt said quietly. ‘The old man’s dying.’
‘By Jesus!’ Buckmaster cried, whipping himself up for violence. ‘Then I’ll help him on his way.’
Suddenly and dreadfully he raised his rifle and blasted through the black man’s chest.
Lunt sat there in the pathetic splatter of blood, still holding the old man’s bony body against his. His hatred for the men in front of him filled the whole of his throat and banged in his skull.
‘He would have died anyway,’ he said. ‘You swine.’
He laid the body back on the bed. The stained sheets took on a brighter hue.
‘Where are they?’ Buckmaster asked. His mouth was still trickling the saliva of his excitement. He felt a tightening in his groin. He found himself levelling his rifle at Lunt who smiled now, and the smile was the thorn in the other man’s skin.
‘I have nothing to say,’ he said simply.
‘You’re the law!’ screamed Buckmaster. ‘So you are the law! Where the bloody hell have they gone?’
‘I’m not,’ Lunt said with finality, ‘saying a bloody word.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ Buckmaster whimpered. ‘Do you want a massacre! Let’s fix the bastard.’
Sweetman uttered a Judas ‘Sorry, old man’ and the rest of them seized him then. One of them went outside and brought in some saddle ropes and although Lunt fought them back a rifle butt knocked the sense out of him and they lashed him strongly with a lot of unnecessary rope to the dead man and then both of them to the bed. Face to face. Lunt lay with his lips shoved into flesh already cold.
DORAHY LIES on his narrow hotel bed and thinks of Charlie Lunt. Waiting round to register amid a bunch of old-timers in the lobby, he had stood apart from them when he could. Palsy-walsy, those others, clustering almost recognisable beside the pub’s weary potted ferns with quick reminiscence, those tiny sparklers of recalled friendship cultivated for the seven-day stay with ‘Well keep in touch’ to keep them going.
How old would he be now? Dorahy wonders, remembering finding him, riding out there at the end of the week with the slaughters at Mandarana still a fresh stain. Afraid to enter because of the stench, and then seeing it, hearing the dead whimper as the dog snarled from the back of the room. A job more than he could stomach, but he had done it. Somehow. The ropes sunk deep in flesh by now, cut and falling away and Lunt dropping off the stretcher onto the floor with the terrible reek of his black companion stuck to his clothes and face.
Lugging him into the buggy, then, and saddling up, the dog as inert on the buggy floor as his master. Glancing back at the sunken face beside the dog’s skeletal head and imagining—was it?—that once he heard the word ‘Thanks’.
Young Jenner peers round the door of the bedroom, his face adolescent earnest, and says, ‘Sir, he’s getting better. My mother says it’s a miracle.’
‘Who did it, boy?’ he asks.
’He won’t say,’ young Jenner says. ‘Mr Buckmaster says it was the blacks did it.’
‘Desecrate their own?’
‘He says it was a punishment for killing the old man.’
‘And what does Mr Lunt say?’
‘He won’t say anything.’
‘What a world!’ Dorahy thinks. ‘What a world!’
He crosses to his window and looks out. Town looms out of rose. He marvels at the static quality of buildings he remembers, still there but nursing different memories for other eyes. He walks out to the veranda in front and looks down the road to see the school, extended and gardened, yet with a remembered window through which he had eased his mind while stumbling translation pocked the unreality of tropical summer. He can see the irony of it better now, the folly of discussing Hannibal’s passage to power in this scraggy landscape that bore the frightful sores of its own history, scenes Suetonius would have regarded with horror—shattered black flesh, all the more horrible because of the country’s negation—none of your soft olive groves and dove-blueness in the hills—heat, dust and the threat of scrub where trees grew like mutations.
Yet Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus put up alongside the scrabblings and the gropings, the arrowed hearts and linked initials behind the School of Arts, wasn’t so different at that. Thinking of the slender boys bedewed with odours and remembering young Jenner in love with the slender ghost of the fat woman he had recognised in the lobby. Where, unable to rest, he feels that he must return. He unpacks his bag and hangs his other suit in the wardrobe. Womb-fluid is all nostalgia, he tells himself, walking back down the stairs, his puritan mouth keeled over towards disapproval.
At the foot of the stairs a man is waiting.
Dorahy looks uncertainly at a face whose features have been bashed by two decades of living since he last saw it. A name struggles to the surface and he knows who it is. There is nothing to this man now: a cipher once he had been washed up and let die.
‘It is Tom Dorahy?’ the lips ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Remember me?’
‘I’m terribly afraid…’ He is battling to gain time. The lost shiftiness of the face disturbs him. He finds himself shrinking.
‘Barney Sweetman,’ the old man says, confirming what Dorahy knows. ‘There isn’t too much the same, but I’d know you.’
Grudgingly Dorahy puts out a hand and has it pumped for a few seconds while Sweetman’s down-and-out angel face crawls into his for deliverance.
‘I remember,’ Dorahy says at last. ‘Things were different then. Are they any different now, I wonder?’
‘A lot,’ the other says, and they both recall the high rock and the court and a certain hot noon. ‘Yes, a lot.’ Sweetman pushes his mouth into a smile. ‘I’ve cut right out of municipal politics altogether now. I’m still State member for this area. Gives me a wider interest. And there’s no real retiring age, you know. A man has to do his work. You retire when the electors tell you and not a day before.’
‘And they haven’t told you yet?’
‘Still the same old Tom,’ Sweetman says, grinning. ‘You haven’t changed, mate. No. They haven’t sent me out yet.’
‘And Buckmaster?’ Dorahy asks. ‘Buckmaster and his now middle-aged bull son?’
‘Buckmaster’s still here,’ he says. ‘But his boy pulled out of the police and runs a pub on the Palmer. A fine man he’s turned out, so it happens.’
‘My God,’ Dorahy says. ‘My God!’
Sweetman places his arm around the thin shoulders for a moment. ‘You’ve come back, Tom,’ he says. ‘What’s your reason then? You shouldn’t have come back in a spirit of criticism. That’s all over now. So long ago no one remembers.’
‘I remember.’
‘You won’t forget, you mean. Are growing pains the only things you recall, eh?’
‘Is that how you dismiss it? Growing pains!’
‘Then why have you come back?’
‘In the spirit of curiosity.’
‘I hope that’s all,’ Sweetman says. ‘I’ve come along specially to meet you’ (‘Forestall,’ Dorahy thinks) ‘as part of the old place, to ask you round for a drink tonight before the official welcome next week. You’ll be in that, won’t you?’
Your lousy vote-catching manner, Dorahy thinks. ‘I’ll be there,’ he says.
‘Where’s Charlie Lunt these days?’ he asks.
Sweetman’s face closes over. ‘Old Charlie,’ he muses. ‘Finally gave up that p
roperty of his. It was falling apart. He never did strike enough water.’
‘He lost heart?’ Dorahy prompts.
‘You could say that.’
‘He could have said more,’ Dorahy whispers. He feels very old suddenly. The girl behind the desk is watching them both. He is incapable of giving her a smile.
‘Where is he then?’ he persists.
‘Somewhere up the coast,’ Sweetman answers at last. ‘A little mixed business. Better for him. Look after Mr Dorahy,’ he says swinging towards the girl behind the desk. Pulling rank. ‘He’s one of our more important guests.’
‘Certainly, Sir Barnabas,’ she says. It sounds incredibly comic. She sighs too, Dorahy notices, and he thinks, Ah by next election he’ll know what it is to be told. He’ll know all right.’
‘Have a bit of a kip, now, Tom.’ Sweetman uses a patting action on the other’s shoulder. ‘You could do with a bit of a lie-down, eh? And we’ll see you tonight about eight. We’re still at the old place. Bit bigger, bit smarter, but much the same. You know me. Nothing grand.’
Mr Dorahy has his lie-down.
HOW MANY men, Mr Sheridan asked Lieutenant Buckmaster, are there in your detachment?
Ten.
Ten official members?
The lieutenant squirmed. No.
Then how many?
Four official members only.
And were the men who accompanied you on this third expedition the same ones we were speaking of before, those same ten, official or not?
Lieutenant Buckmaster hesitated. Not all.
Who else, then, was with you on this expedition?
A few of the townsmen.
A few?
A few.
By what authority did they accompany you? I assume they were armed.
I was sent for by Mr Romney.
Directly by Mr Romney?
Lieutenant Buckmaster shuffled something—his feet? his mind?
No. I acted on a letter received by one of the townsmen.
And who was that?
My father.
At the back of the court Mr Dorahy who had been readmitted to give evidence felt his lips in an unbearable twitch of a smile.
Mr Romney is a member of the Separation League, is he not? asked Mr Sheridan.
Yes.
Then he would know your father well—could be classed as a personal friend perhaps?
I suppose so.
What did you do, pursued Mr Sheridan, when you came to Romney’s station?
I went first to the outlying properties and did not find any of the tribe there. Then I went towards the coast and followed it up to Tumbul. Finding no tracks there, I came back across the flats to Kuttabul where I discovered evidence that led us towards the Mandarana scrub. I found the blacks at the water-hole back from Mandarana.
What did you do then?
I dispersed them.
How did you know they were the blacks who had committed the thefts? Had you any direct evidence?
The boys at Mr Romney’s told me these were the blacks. They said the tribe was in the habit of coming across their land to move south down the coast.
And that was the only evidence you had? Did you not, for example, recognise one of the gins who had been seen frequently about the town?
Come on, boy! Dorahy encouraged silently from the rear of the court.
The silence began to crackle.
Well, Lieutenant Buckmaster? Did you not recognise one of the gins?
The courtroom air was like a giant and fetid bubble of Freddie’s blood.
No, he said.
For the moment, Mr Sheridan said, sipping at a glass of water beside him, let us leave that. Have you proper control over your troopers?
Yes.
But this group was not all native troopers?
No.
But you had proper control over the whole group?
Lieutenant Buckmaster began sweating again.
Well, Lieutenant Buckmaster? Had you control over the whole group?
I cannot really say.
Really say, lieutenant? I put it to you that at one stage your troopers and the townsmen with you acted as separate entities.
That could be possible.
Had you given orders to the entire group?
Yes.
What was the nature of those orders?
I told them to go into the scrub and disperse the tribe.
Disperse? That is a strange word. What do you mean by dispersing?
Firing at them. I gave strict orders that no gins were to be touched.
And your orders were not obeyed?
To my knowledge they were.
But the group had split into two punitive forces, had it not?
Yes.
Then how would you know whether your orders were in fact obeyed?
Lieutenant Buckmaster offered silence.
Mr Sheridan’s colour deepened. I must insist on an answer, Lieutenant Buckmaster, he said. If there are warrants issued then you are, I take it, acting correctly when you try to disperse or capture certain blacks. But in this case there was no warrant. I wish to know what induced you to give an order than could result in indiscriminate slaughter.
There was no—
Lieutenant Buckmaster, were your orders in fact obeyed?
I don’t know.
I see. And do you think it proper to fire upon the blacks in this way in such circumstances?
They don’t understand anything else.
How many bodies, Lieutenant Buckmaster, did you see when all—I repeat—all your forces rejoined?
I saw six.
Was there not a gin killed as well?
Dorahy leant forward against the rail in front of him, his face, his entire body, suffused with a kind of delighted anguish. He shouted, Yes yes yes yes yes, and for the second time that day Mr Sheridan had to ask for the witness to be removed.
Lunt lay on his bed listening to the dust settle. Or thought he could.
Not the same bed. He had burnt that, dragged it out into a rose of fire made by the first of the failed mills. Listening for the strain of rope and water being spewed up its pipes, he substituted the satiric fire instead, dragged on the putrid mattress where still he could see some of his own hairs and the old man’s. Such a marriage. Consequently he uttered some sort of prayer during the sheet and the blanket. His girl had never. Not ever. He would have laughed if it hadn’t seemed unkind at the best and blasphemous at the worst.
So he lay, returned and nursed back to some sort of health, for he had lost a leg, severed at a southern hospital, and he stumped round on his new wooden one. The only true separationist, he told himself, grimly smiling at the sick joke. Gangrene had got him, had entered silently a minor graze below the knee so that the old man’s poison had done for it. So he lay, hearing the dust move, and knew that soon he would have to be about the simplicities of living—the horses, the dog, his few scraggy cattle whose rumps were leaner than his own. What day of the week it was he wondered, knowing he should have smelled out Saturday with his heart.
He put on his breakfast. The effort of it. Sat munching some bran mash in milk and sipping tea—the terrifying comforting monotony of it—and saw from the edge of his veranda, a long way off, a horseman who turned into Dorahy trotting across the outer paddock.
Dorahy was being rational and categoric that morning with the sun finally up and classes week-ended. He was full of dour logic.
‘You must take action,’ He tapped the wooden leg. ‘The whole town is aware of who and when and why. Don’t let it settle.’
‘There’s no purpose,’ Lunt said, sad for the other bloke who was so righteous in his pettiness.
‘There’s every purpose. This stinking tiny town taking people by the nose and then ramming them in their own filth—or worse, the filth of others. By God!’ he breathed.
‘They’ve gone now,’ Lunt said. ‘My squatters. My dark campers.’
‘There was a massacre,’ Dorahy
said, ‘the very next day while you were gasping it out. No one wanted to tell you.’ He couldn’t resist ill-tidings for the life of him. ‘But there was a bloody massacre.’
Here, Lunt recalled, was an explanation for averted eyes during his convalescence, the clipped-off utterance. Remembering the point of light in a glass of water steady on a bedside table while truth somehow refracted around the steadiness of light. Lips became oblique as words.
But Dorahy was not oblique.
‘Someone,’ he said, ‘Buckmaster, someone, lashed you to that bed leaving you to die.’
‘I’m unkillable,’ Lunt grinned for the folly of it while Dorahy stirred his tea angrily.
’The whole school is buzzing with it now that you’ve come back—like this.’ He gestured towards the wooden leg. ‘They’re like blowflies buzzing over the dead meat of that week-end. The town. I’ll stir things up, truly. There’ll be a commission about this.’
Lunt said, ‘That will only fatten their self-importance. They’ll grow big with a commission. Let it rest.’
‘But it’s not just you,’ Dorahy replied, wiping a trickle of tea from his long chin. ‘It’s the old man as well. It’s Kowaha. It’s her husband. It’s Kowaha’s child.’
‘The child?’
‘A miracle,’ Dorahy said. ‘I’ve been looking for one in this place. A blooming of Eden, as you say. They collected her, those vigilantes of justice. Some curiosity or oddity, they thought. The Boyds looked after her for a few weeks and now the Jenners have her. There’s no one left, with the tribe scattered to buggery.’ The word sounded terrible on the teacher’s tongue. He felt a vile taste and heard Buckmaster.
‘I see,’ he remembered the other man saying, ‘the bloody kid came top in Latin! Some sort of prodigy, eh? You coach them younger and younger, Mr Dorahy?’
‘She was more apt than the Lieutenant,’ he had countered.
Now he watched Lunt shift his good leg, rubbing at a stiff thigh.
‘Please,’ he begged. ‘Please. Don’t let them get away with it.’
Lunt’s clear blue eyes speculated on distance. The mills were unmoving, their arms dead wood. If only the water. It could be his salvation, that lost coolness.