1915

by Roger McDonald

  The place crackled with work towards Christmas. His mother, he now noticed, was indeed distressed about Mrs Mackenzie. She asked Billy and his father over for meals when they could manage and then the strain showed. Mr Mackenzie had sworn off the bottle (Billy confirmed it), but when Walter and Billy strolled down to the yards to look at the new draught horses, and Walter led with his question about the old man’s whisky habits, Billy deflected from the unspoken fact of his mother and swore instead about Arnie Scott’s double dealing widow.

  For three weeks Walter finished work at midnight and started again at dawn. His energy seemed inexhaustible. When Douggie arrived home with John, his school friend who was to stay till Christmas, Walter found time among everything else to saddle horses and take them shooting. The harvest began and it was like a solid dream repeated day after day. He did the sewing when he wasn’t handling one of the harvesters and went at it so fiercely that his father left him there — with a leather hand-pad, loops of twine on his belt, and a canvas hat pulled low over his eyes to cut the smashed-glass glare of the fallen wheat. Blacky and Ned Reid shared the work (they brought their machinery, and would have the Gilchrists’ help next).

  So when the Gilchrists’ harvest was finished Blacky called up to the house to discuss his arrangements. He came on a day when the last bags had waddled away on wagons for the siding, when the pace of work dipped and they found time to look about. Douggie and his friend took off for the hills (John was to leave for home on the night train), Mr Gilchrist eyed his empty paddocks, and his wife cooked for Christmas.

  Blacky was tall, but looked even taller at the cane veranda table with his battered thumbs embracing Mrs Gilchrist’s Karlsbad china and his long legs knifed up practically to chest height. As he drank, it was as though he’d hauled the cup down from an elevated position (like the handle on a bagging shute) to work the tea in, wave by wave, rather than taking it in sips, so that his every gesture, like his conversation, flowed to himself.

  “We don’t live so good as this over our way.” He took a slice of sponge cake and licked extruded cream from its compressed waist before taking a bite.

  “It is Christmas,” said Mrs Gilchrist, who was hovering at his side with a fresh pot.

  “Work don’t stop for Santa Claus, Mrs Gilchrist.”

  “Surely you’ll take a rest on Christmas Day, it’s the one day, here.”

  “No fear. Come the twenty-fifth the wheat’ll be busting to hop in the bag.”

  “When do you want us?” Walter did the asking.

  “Aw, about six in the morning will do. After you’ve been to church at the latest.” He slapped his leg. “Fell for it!”

  “This year,” said Mrs Gilchrist with a cold smile, “the Christmas service is on the Sunday before.”

  Her husband collected crumbs from his knee. He and Blacky shook hands: “Until later, Stan.” The proper name somehow subtracted the scaring factor — Blacky looked vaguely light weight.

  “Boxing Day, then,” Blacky winked. But he couldn’t have cared less about Mrs Gilchrist when he thanked her for the morning tea.

  “Don’t take any notice of Mum,” said Walter as they crossed the yard.

  “Eh?” said Blacky. Then he snapped his fingers: “I don’t go for this religion malarkey.”

  “Why not?” It seemed out of character that Blacky with his animal appetites and machine-like constitution built for work should touch the philosophical.

  “It’s all words. All bloody hot air. You’ve only got to look at a dead cow some time. That’s us, boy, skin and bones and guts that go off just like a cow. I want to meet the man who digs out the eternal bloody soul. I’ll shake his hand. Christ, we’ve been waiting long enough to see it.”

  Blacky grinned as he swung a leg over the saddle and bent to click the petrol cock. “It all fits. Christmas Day and the eternal soul mumbo-jumbo. Scratch one, you’ll find the other.” He unhitched his goggles from the handlebars. “But you’re right,” and he paused to let the adjective spit its opposite: wrong — “Christmas Day ain’t for that. I reckon at lunch I’ll be stuffing it down in the shade along with the best of ’em. The harvest be buggered.” He kicked the motor and it spluttered. He pulled the goggles down and looked straight at Walter. “Right-oh, sonny. See you Boxing Day.” And he roared off with coils of dust bounding along behind.

  Walter took Douggie and his young school friend John to town in the sulky. From the last rise they saw the headlamp of the train on its way up the line from Forbes. “I hope I miss it,” said John, but Walter snapped the whip. In the early dark they held a race with the miles-off engine, the boys cheering when the light slipped from view (now they were sure to miss it), and arguing with Walter as he forced the pace — even though the light wobbled, blinked, hovered as far away as ever.

  When they reached the station there was no sign of the train. They quizzed Ozzie Deep but he shrugged. While Walter smoked a cigarette Douggie and John ran to the end of the platform to keep a look-out and listen for the singing rails. After another five minutes it occurred to Walter that the light they’d been competing against had been a star: the evening star, the planet Venus. He braced his mind on the thought: there was something magnificent about pitting a horse and sulky against a planet.

  And suddenly the train from Forbes came right at him: waddling down the platform making friendly “oof-oof” noises. Douggie and John ran with it, then the train windows were dribbling past: deep golden pictures of glass and varnish which framed among much else a sudden flutter of white that was Frances Reilly. A man stood beside her wearing a drooping felt hat and a pin-striped suit. Now their door swung open. Walter froze. Frances carried a yellow straw hat with a red ribbon. She jumped down and led the man over.

  “Dad, this is the Walter Gilchrist I told you about.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” said Walter, hearing his voice boom.

  “Charmed,” said Mr Reilly, fanning himself with his hat.

  “I last saw your daughter at a play in Sydney,” Walter addressed Reilly man-to-man, then clumsily added: “Though she was too high and mighty to notice me.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Terrible weather,” puffed her father. He studied the clock and made a decision. “If you’ll bear with me I’ll slip out for a minute and say hello to a colleague.” He joined the stream of brisk-walking men that flowed towards the Railway Hotel.

  When he’d gone Walter heard himself say: “I’m pleased to see you again.”

  She frowned: “I did see you at the theatre.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Somehow he’d said the right thing. Then she fired interested questions at him: asking about things he thought he’d covered during the cold night’s trip to the coast — where their farm was, what his parents were like, even which school — no, she remembered. “But I do recall you don’t like theatre.”

  “No, I’m theatre-mad,” said Walter. He indicated his work-clothes: “Straight after the train I’m off to a show.”

  “I’ve finished with school,” Frances informed him as they strolled with the train stretching ahead and the long asphalt pavement of the platform widening to the darkness of infinity. “From now on I’ll be helping Mother with her piano classes. Come and see us when you’re down?” For a second her hand touched his arm, just lingering there. “I’ll be running the little ones through their scales.” She played a tune on the brim of her hat, and with the help of her other hand danced the hat ahead, investing it with life. “I’d love to be interrupted.”

  What would Billy have replied to this invitation?

  “Then I’ll come and interrupt you,” said Walter gruffly.

  “Do,” she pleaded. “I want the whole world to come.”

  Then she ran ahead to fetch pencil and paper from the compartment to give him the address, and at that moment Douggie and John decided to latch on.

  “Hoi, Wally, what’re you doing?” They swarmed like sly half-backs through a ruck of legs
. John braked and stood with hands on hips, a miniature rooster: “Who’s the girl,” he crowed. Walter grabbed him by the ear and twisted it till he squawked.

  “I’m sorry.” Walter squatted. “Look, when you blokes get a bit older you won’t make jokes like that. They get a fellow fighting mad.” He found a three-penny bit. “Here, get some lollies.”

  “Thanks, Wal, you’re a sport,” said John. But Douggie called back, “Hello Miss!” — Walter stood to find Frances standing behind him holding a piece of notepaper.

  “You can come by ferry.”

  The paper was the colour of butter: the colour of her hat: and the hat shone its buttery yellow onto her bare lower arm. So he folded part of her away when he slipped the note in his pocket.

  “I don’t know when it will be,” he shrugged. “Soon, I’m sure. Keep an eye out for me. What if I write you a letter?”

  “I’d like you to. I like letters.”

  “From the whole world?”

  “Well, you could write,” she stated. And the words were so quietly inviting that she seemed to be saying, “From this part, especially.”

  Walter just stared at her until she fiddled with her ribbon in embarrassment.

  The whistle saved them: at its summons the stream of men flowed in reverse from the hotel.

  “We’re away,” announced Mr Reilly, “about half a minute to go.” He looked cheerily at the train, smelling of whisky.

  Then Frances’s hand was in Walter’s: “Write?”

  The guard was bad-temperedly slamming doors and Douggie called from farther down the platform: “Waltah!”

  He remembered how Billy had looked, stranded on the platform. He stepped back in order to wave and watch for John at the same time. Frances and her father were framed for a moment in the window, a white figure and a black figure in a yellow square. After a second this picture dissolved and the figures swam away in a confusion of glass and varnished wood, their places taken by gliding mantles of molten light.

  “I’ve got a message to deliver,” Walter told Douggie as they drove from the station to the Royal Hotel. There was no message, except what he now told himself: he had captured Frances’s interest.

  The barmaid remembered him: “It’s Walter, isn’t it?”

  The rum shrieked at him and then changed its mood: embraced him fiercely, and rippled aside to regard him with soft kindness. He must have gasped at the start, because the barmaid laughed.

  “Blacky Reid was here,” she told him. Walter should have guessed already. This was Blacky’s lair. He imagined a smell, virulence reeking of motor spirit, and heard Blacky retelling the clash with his mother while his mates guffawed. At the end of these thoughts he was surprised to see only a splash of rum left so he asked for another. The spirits no longer bit: he read the name “Bundaberg” on the bottle and breathed the distant sugary air of Queensland.

  She asked him why he was in town, and he found himself telling her about Frances. When he finished she said: “It’s easy to see you’re in love.”

  “She’s good looking,” he boasted.

  On the way home the effects of the drinks wore off, leaving the events of the evening as sealed in as those of a play. Falling stars slipped from the sky one after the other, blinking out behind the dark heap of Mt Cookapoi. He made a wish to accompany each one: Her.

  In the secrecy of his bedroom he scrutinized the note, holding it up to the hurting light of the lamp. Her touch had been dry as this paper, though underneath something had rippled like silk and skimmed the surface when their eyes met. Turning the paper edge-on (to find the night’s code greeting him again: black, white, yellow) he saw faint hairs of fibre rising from the small furrow of her pencil-marks. She had written her name. Using his magnifying glass, the furrow deepened to a ditch. It was like the dropped edge of a sand pile, only it never moved. Here he located the very instant when she had impressed her whole self in a line leading unvaryingly to him.

  6

  Divine Service

  When Billy laughed these days and said, “I’m a bad bugger, eh?” he meant it. While he believed in God and, as far as he cared to notice them, the laws of the church, he saw himself standing off to one side. The laws were all right — he’d pay some day for breaking them — but for the moment they were for other people and got in the way.

  Billy saw heaven as a place full of ladies from town dressed up as if waiting for the train. He saw Christ babbling on over their bent heads while they crept forward, all those old ducks, and tugged at the hem of his gown. There was nothing to be said to that weak and bearded figure. But if Billy could make contact with the Old Chap — he got on well with old men — he was sure the two of them would hit it off and get to the bottom of things. He wanted somewhere decent for his mother to go when she died. She’d like somewhere with a bit of grit in it. Why shouldn’t she get a heaven right here among the paddocks and hillsides she loved? He wondered what would happen if he prayed at white-hot heat and asked God for a bargain. He’d do anything to make her happy. So as the church at the crossroads came into view and he cantered to catch up to his father he was impatient for the service to get started and that moment of blunt contact to begin.

  “It’ll be hot later,” he greeted Mr Gilchrist, then clamped Walter by the elbow and urged: “Come on over and say g’day to the girls.”

  Walter found himself in view of those “good sports”, Billy’s cousins, puffing out his chest, hooking his thumbs in his belt. The cousins, sixteen and nineteen, with small chins, narrow chests, eyes as quick as pullets’, glanced from one male to the other as if they had special food hidden about their persons. Then Ethel cocked her head to avoid the sun and bowled Billy a difficult question, something about “May”.

  For some reason the query rang in the air like a shout.

  “Who?” asked Walter.

  Billy bit a fingernail and grunted.

  “Someone in hospital,” Ethel confided.

  At last Billy answered: “The police think it was the same shearer that pole-axed Albert Telford last Easter.” After saying “a funny show all right” he excused himself and joined his father, who had signalled.

  Ethel wrinkled her nose as if at a bad smell. “A nurse at the hospital got followed one night and attacked.” She maintained the furrowed nose, but now seemed to be asking: do you think wrinkled noses are pretty?

  Lottie pitched in: “The police quizzed Billy.”

  The Reverend Fox and his wife stood to one side under a copious yellow box tree. As the worshippers filed past they shot the couple shyly curious glances.

  “Merry Christmases” multiplied from pew to pew: the phrase increased until it became a murmur, releasing a flow of small talk that ebbed only when Mrs Fox fussed her way to the organ. The cousins after a last peek around buried their hands in their laps feeling satisfactorily observed. The older women prayed by squeezing the bridges of their noses with thumb and forefinger, as if a root lived there that must be pinched to encourage the growth of the spirit. The prayer over, they took out raffia fans and cooled themselves rapidly. Where did the mothers go in these brief journeys? Walter had difficulty enough framing one clear hope from the many of his own that contended. But the women knew what they wanted.

  Then he saw Billy at prayer also, and stared surprised at a thick yellow ear clutched devotedly in a red hand. The prayer went on and on through the neutral minutes of Mrs Fox shuffling sheets of music while bottoms made their last heaving adjustments, noses were blown, children silenced, knuckles cracked, yawns stifled. The varnished pews were already sticky. Then the corrugated iron of the roof gave a muffled thud as if God had knocked from above to say, “I am ready.”

  Billy looked up with a defensive set to his features. He had been exposing himself to another’s will. It was not so much a matter of pushing in his prayer for what he wanted as a placement of himself and his intentions across from the might-be’s of a force yet to reveal its hand. Billy’s mental stance was like a boxer’s at t
he ready.

  The youthful Mr Fox started the service by gripping the pulpit and exposing white knuckles. He chose a couple of people in the congregation and looked them in the eye: Billy, who tried not to poke out his tongue, Mrs Gilchrist, who fanned herself in reply with the strength of tight-wound clockwork, embarrassed that a man not much older than her son should presume to seek out her soul. Then a child dropped a coin which gave out a long looping noise until the clap of a foot extinguished it. And just as throats were tickling and the impulse to clear them became irresistible, Mr Fox grinned mechanically, threw up his hands, and yelled:

  “Rejoice!”

  Ethel Mackenzie stifled a squeal and many others started at this piece of ecclesiastical theatre.

  On signal the organ took a succession of deep breaths accompanied by regular wooden bumps from the footpedals. And at the first dustily-trumpeted chord the congregation rose: “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the new-born King, Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled’ —