Blue Dog

by Louis de Bernières

  Towards the end of daylight, ten miles out, when he was driving back from Roebourne, Granpa saw something come out into the middle of the road ahead of him, about a quarter of a mile off. He couldn’t make it out because of the shimmering heat haze and at first he thought it must be a crazy dingo. As he drew near, he realised it was Blue, and stopped the ute. The alternative would have been to run him straight over.

  ‘Blimey, mate, you’re a long way out,’ he said. ‘And you’re a walking dust heap. Hop in.’

  Blue leapt into the back of the ute and settled down. Granpa drove carefully home, because more than once he had lost a dog from the back by swinging round corners too fast. In fact the vet in Roebourne had told him it was the most common cause of dog injuries in these parts, but at least it wasn’t as bad as the dogs that came in poisoned by dingo bait. The vet reserved his best expletives and most white-hot anger for the drongos who put out dingo bait.

  That evening they all had dinner outside because it wasn’t too hot, all the men together at the great long rough old table. Granpa set out hurricane lamps, and put a couple of bulbs on an extension lead. He said it was a special welcoming dinner for Miss Betty, and there was to be no swearing, no belching, no chundering, no letting rip with trumpeting trouser busters, no filthy jokes and no fighting.

  ‘What’s the point, then?’ asked Taylor Pete, but he turned up anyway, because Jimmy Umbrella was going to do a proper barbie for once, instead of all the interesting things that Granpa normally liked to eat. A slab of steak and some snaggers was right up Taylor Pete’s street. He arrived just as Jimmy was firing up the barbecue and reminded him that he liked his steak still mooing.

  Stemple was extra smart that evening. He had even thought of putting on a tie, but that was going too far for a proper westsider to contemplate, and in any case, having spent some time turning out his drawers, he realised that he didn’t have one. He arrived with clean clothes and polished shoes, and his guitar on the passenger seat of his ute.

  Stemple was the best local musician, and that was because there was no competition. He would get two verses into a song and then forget the words. He would start the song again, and forget the words in exactly the same place. This could go on for a long time. Sometimes he would remember the words but not the chords, and would stop and fiddle around on the guitar as he tried to find the right one. That was difficult, because how do you find the right chord when you are not singing in tune anyway? Luckily, by the time that Stemple got around to playing at parties, the men were already four sheets to the wind, and beyond caring.

  Thanks to Granpa’s prohibitions, it was extremely awkward for anyone to think of anything to say, and at first the evening turned out to be somewhat sticky. The men ate quietly, sneaking sideways glances at the lovely Miss Betty Marble, and when they wanted to let rip they left the table and sneaked behind the shed. Only Blue did any different. He ate a pack of raw snaggers, and the gristly lumps off the steaks that the men flicked over to him, and made the night intermittently aromatic, as was his wont.

  It was such an awkward evening that all they managed to talk about was ping-pong. The men played a lot of ping-pong when they were not swimming, shooting, fishing, or out on the lash in Roebourne.

  ‘I’ll teach you, if you like,’ said Stemple to Betty, and she replied, ‘No need. I’m already damned good.’

  The men were a little taken aback. Did she say ‘damned’? Did real ladies say ‘damned’? Did that mean that they could say it too?

  ‘I’ll give you a game,’ said Stemple.

  ‘You’re on,’ said Betty. ‘I’ll bet you a kiss.’

  ‘A kiss?’ repeated Stemple, dumbfounded.

  ‘Yeah, if you win, I kiss Mick on the top of the head, and if I win, you kiss the dog.’

  ‘Blimey,’ was all that Stemple could say. This was a lairy lady indeed.

  ‘Stemple plays the guitar,’ said Mick suddenly.

  Stemple shot him a mean glance, because at heart he knew he was a rotten musician, and didn’t want to have to show himself up. He’d brought his guitar out of vanity, half hoping that no one would ask him to sing.

  ‘Oh, what do you play?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Um, not much. Rock and roll, a bit of Dylan, a bit of Tom Paxton.’

  ‘Do you play “A Whiter Shade of Pale”? I just love that. Can’t get it out of my head sometimes.’

  Mick said, ‘He plays that a lot, but …’ He was going to say ‘but it’s really terrible’, but stopped himself just in time.

  ‘It’s bloody terrible,’ said Taylor Pete. ‘You don’t want to wrap your ears round that.’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ retorted Stemple.

  ‘It’s true, though,’ said Taylor Pete.

  ‘You want to watch it, mate,’ said Stemple, his colour rising.

  ‘No blues, boys,’ said Granpa. ‘Remember what I said.’

  The long and short of it was that, out of sheer manly pride, Stemple had to fetch his guitar from the ute, tune it up as approximately as he could, and have a go at ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. His hands were sweaty, shaky and slippery, and perspiration ran from his temples. He had never felt more in need of a saviour. He offered a silent prayer to the god of desperate musicians, whoever that was. There wasn’t anything in the world more important on that day than making a good impression on Betty Marble.

  He began to sing that famous first line, but immediately there came a howl from under the table. Blue liked making music, and this was the first time he had had any accompaniment, apart from when he sang along to the whistle of the kettle. He was going to make the most of it. ‘Owwwwwwwwww, owwwwwwwwwww,’ he sang. In the near distance, the dingos joined in.

  Everybody laughed, and Stemple, who couldn’t believe his luck, said, ‘Sorry, Miss, I can’t compete with that.’

  ‘Never mind, Stemple, you did your best. Can I see the guitar?’

  Stemple handed it over, and Betty adjusted the tuning. She began to pluck it delicately, and then sang softly. As she grew bolder she let her voice ring out. She sang ‘Silver Dagger’, ‘Ten Thousand Miles’, ‘Black Is the Colour’, ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’, ‘The Last Thing on My Mind’. She had a sweet clear soprano voice, a little breathy, but with perfect articulation. Blue and the dingos fell silent, as did the many animals of the night. The men put their hands in their laps and just listened. This was the most beautiful evening of their lives. What can you do when something so sublime happens so unexpectedly? These songs made them think of what they had lost, and of what they hoped to win. This pretty young woman seemed to be singing of what was so well hidden in their hearts that they had never been aware of it before. She made Mick think of his father in his grave, and his mother mad with grief. Granpa thought about Granma, and his son, and the years left to him if he was lucky.

  When Betty had had enough, she quietly propped the guitar against the table, and said, ‘Sorry for going on so long. I get carried away.’

  The men were so moved that they hardly knew how to react. Clapping and cheering just would not have been reverent enough. Granpa got to his feet with a tot of Bundy in his hand, but found it difficult to speak. Eventually he managed to say, ‘I’ve never heard anything so damned good in all my life. Welcome to the homestead, Betty. Let’s have music every day.’

  The men got to their feet and toasted a welcome, straight out of their tinnies.

  After the party was over and everyone had left, apart from Betty and Stemple, she asked him, ‘Do you think I could borrow your guitar sometimes? I feel kind of lost without one. I’ve been kicking myself for leaving mine behind, but everyone said it would come unglued in the heat.’

  ‘You can have it, Miss.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. How about a day on and a day off?’

  ‘Why aren’t you, you know, doing that for a living, Miss?’

  ‘I will be,’ said Betty confidently. ‘I’m going to go to Paris. After this. Did you know there’s just been something called “The Summe
r of Love”?

  ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘Well, there has been. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?’

  ‘It does, Miss.’

  ‘I don’t want to miss any more summers of love. I’m going to Paris and I’m going to busk on the banks of the Seine, and I’ll go to London, and maybe San Francisco.’

  ‘You’re in the right place,’ said Stemple. ‘Out here in the Pilbara, everyone passing through is a dreamer. This is the land where dreams are hatched. Then you go away and make them true. And all your life you dream of the Pilbara, where your dreams were made, because this place gets to you. But you never come back. That’s what they say.’

  ‘Stemple?’

  ‘Yes, Miss?’

  ‘You know that bet about the dog?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Well, it’s all right. You wouldn’t have had to kiss the dog.’

  He thought of what she might mean, and asked, ‘I get to kiss Mick on the top of the head, right?’

  She put her arms round his neck and shook her head in the darkness. Her eyes seemed dark and liquid. ‘Not what I meant at all,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do I have to beat you at ping-pong?’

  ‘No. Not really. You don’t have a dog’s chance of doing that.’

  And that was how their first kiss came about, behind the pump house, with a big moon lofted like a Chinese lantern in the sky, and Stemple’s guitar hanging on its strap upside down on his back, and the tune of ‘Amazing Grace’ still going round and round in his head.

  DISGRACE

  STEMPLE HAD TO swallow a great deal of pride in order to be with a girl as gifted as Betty, and it wasn’t just that she thrashed him at ping-pong every time, 21–0, even when she played left-handed. It was the way that she thrashed him. She could do serves with different kinds of spins on them, and you never knew what they were going to be until it was too late. She could do a forehand smash with so much top spin that it didn’t even bounce, it just landed and rolled. She could do a backhand that put the ball on the edge of the white line every time. Everybody was amazed by it. Stemple asked her how she had got to be so good, and she said it was all because of her dad. He used to put a coin on the table, and let her keep it if she could land a ball on top of it, and that was how she had saved up enough for a ukulele, which was what she had played before she graduated to her first guitar.

  The one thing that Stemple loved more than anything else was playing on the guitar and singing to it, but, compared to Betty, he had been forced to realise that he was just another happy basher and hopeless caterwauler. He wanted to be better than that.

  He came round almost every evening to be humiliated at ping-pong and take a music lesson. He had had no idea just how much there was to learn. Betty played scales and made him sing them back to her. As the days went by he found he could sing both higher and lower than he used to. She showed him chords that looked impossible to play, and many of them really were impossible when you first tried them. She showed him how to pick the strings instead of just strumming, and how to make the beat rock, with your right thumb bouncing between the bass strings. She made him play beyond the first position, until he knew the names of every note on every fret of every string, and knew the shapes of all the movable chords. She showed him how to damp the bass strings with the heel of his hand so that they thudded instead of ringing out, and she showed him how to do the calypso slap so that he could play ‘Island in the Sun’ and ‘Jamaica Farewell’.

  Stemple endured the mockery of his friends, who had lost a boozing partner, and put up with them taunting him with ‘You’re a girl’s man now, mate. You’re beyond help, you are.’ Stemple would reply, ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere, mate.’

  His mates were jealous, of course. It was impossible not to be, but at the same time they could see that Betty and Stemple were happy together and had a common bond. He had arrived in the Pilbara wanting to be a jackaroo, to lead the wild outdoor Australian life, only to find that horses were going out of use on the stations. In any case, being a jackaroo was only something he had wanted to do before going on to higher things, except that he did not yet know what these higher things were.

  Betty was also going on to higher things, but she knew exactly what they were. It seemed to them both that they would be going off and doing them together. Stemple took a few days off and cadged a lift on a road train to Perth, returning with another guitar, several sets of strings and a fiddle, because Betty knew how to play that too. He had managed to find a guitar whose glue wouldn’t melt in the Pilbara heat, but the fiddle didn’t last long, and Taylor Pete had to put it back together for Betty, even though he had never worked on an instrument in his life. He made his own little clamps, with four-inch bolts, and slices of dowel. The odd thing about that trip was that Blue had wanted to come along too, so Stemple let him. Naturally, they had often had to open the windows of the cab.

  Stemple and Betty sat face-to-face on the veranda trying out duets together. They began to compose their own songs. She said she wanted to be like Judith Durham from the Seekers. They talked about Paris and San Francisco, and about folk songs and protest songs, and whether the Beatles or the Rolling Stones were better. They held hands in the dark, and lingered a terribly long time when kissing farewell at night.

  The only one who was not happy for them was Mick. He was new to love, and the feelings were welling up in him in a manner that was frightening. It was like having a raging beast inside, where before there had only ever been a tame pup.

  Mick was profoundly in love with his teacher. He did everything he could to please her, and did wonderful work in his exercise books. When she put her hand lightly on his shoulder and leaned over to look at something he had done, he loved the tickle of her hair against his face, and the sweet scent of her breath.

  Mick began to hate Stemple, even though they had always been good mates, and they had learned to ride together. He hated Stemple for taking Blue to Perth without asking, and he hated him for taking Betty away from him. He had the same stupid thought going through his mind all the time, on a loop that just wouldn’t stop turning. He was thinking, ‘Stemple’s six years older than her, and I’m six years younger, so what’s the problem? Six years is only six years, is only six years, is only six years …’

  One day Mick couldn’t stand the jealousy any more, and knew that something had to be done about it. He left his lesson when Betty was briefly out of the room, and, his pencil still in his hand, walked out into the heat of the midday to find Stemple. He was cleaning out Willy’s water trough, with Lamington in attendance and the mad horse not far off, kicking at the fencing. Mick faced Stemple, trembling with just enough rage to overcome his fear.

  ‘What’s up, mate?’ asked Stemple.

  Mick raised his fists. ‘You put ’em up!’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Stemple, his eyebrows practically going over the back of his head.

  ‘Put ’em up!’ repeated Mick. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Bugger off,’ said Stemple, but in a friendly manner.

  ‘Coward!’ said Mick.

  ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘You know what it’s about!’

  ‘I surely don’t, mate.’

  ‘You keep away from her. She’s mine, not yours!’

  ‘Oh cripes,’ said Stemple, cottoning on at last. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know you felt that way. But you should’ve asked her first before you tried to pull one like this, shouldn’t you, mate? A girl isn’t yours just because you say she is. She’s got to be of the same opinion, right? And I don’t fight little boys.’

  ‘I’m not a little boy!’

  ‘No, no, you’re right, mate, you’re a kind of in-betweener. But I’m still not fighting. Understand? Now get back to your schoolroom, and we’ll just forget all about this, right?’

  Mick came at Stemple with his fists flailing, and caught him a few blows on the chest. Stemple grabbed his wrists, and Mick took to kicking him in the shins
. Stemple let go, and hopped about against the pain. He was furious himself now. ‘You’re as mad as your bloody mother,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ demanded Mick.

  ‘You belong in the bloody loony bin, like your bloody mad mother,’ said Stemple.

  Just then Betty emerged from the front door of the homestead, and looked around, calling, ‘Mick! Mick! Where are you?’

  ‘Better get back,’ said Stemple, forcing himself to calm down. He turned and bent over his task, returning to the work of cleaning out Willy’s trough.

  Then Mick did something he was to be ashamed of for the rest of his life. He took his pencil, raised his arm high, and stabbed it violently into Stemple’s back, just below the left shoulder blade. It was a pencil that had been freshly sharpened. It made a horrible crunching noise as it went in, and snapped in half, leaving a ragged stump embedded in Stemple’s back.

  Stemple bellowed, and Mick threw the broken pencil down and took to his heels before Stemple had even had a chance to turn round. He ran in a kind of wild panic to the shed where his motorcycle was kept, kicked it into life, and disappeared up the track in a cloud of red dust. He knew deep in his guts that he would never be able to go back and face the shame.

  Mick sat with his arms around his knees in the darkness of the sacred cave, miserable beyond any misery he had experienced before. He was still trembling. He was thinking that if only he could get that white shard of quartz out of the water, it would be like a magic wand, and he could get rid of Stemple, and make Betty love him, and bring back his father, and make his mother better, and make everybody forget the vile thing he had just done.

  He didn’t have his torch with him, but he crept to the edge of the water, and reached down into it. It felt very silky and cold. He could not reach the stone, so he stretched ever further, and further, until he was in danger of falling in. He only just managed to save himself, and at that moment, right outside the cave, the strangest thing happened. There was a roaring noise. Mick scrambled out into the daylight and was almost plucked into the air. It was the kind of mini tornado that the locals called a Cock-Eyed Bob. Before his eyes it uprooted a gum tree and carried it up and away. The Cock-Eyed Bob travelled away in the direction of the river, and Mick watched it go, until it released the tree, which hit the ground like a man with a parachute, landing on its root ball and toppling over. Mick felt as though he had been taken out of the real world and cast into hell. His brains seemed to thud in his skull and beat against his temples. He returned to the cave, and sat there, becoming hungrier and sadder with every passing moment.