by Alex Miller
‘If there were any I can’t remember them,’ she said. ‘I’d love to see them if they exist. There could be some here, I suppose, among mum and dad’s things. I’m sure there weren’t any framed on the wall at Haddon Hill. I’d remember. I’ll ask Elizabeth.’
‘Yeah, Elizabeth’ll know for sure. There’s boxes of George’s glass plates down there at Ranna to this day, unless old Nellie took them with her. And I don’t believe she would have done that. She left everything else behind.’ He sat thinking, smoking his cigarette and gazing out into the garden. ‘Iain Rennie was thirty-two and Grandma was sixteen when they was married. George Bigges give Grandma that photograph as a wedding present and she always cherished it. Before Iain Rennie proposed to Grandma he rode out to the Suttor country and found her mother camped with their mob along Serpentine Creek, which you would know from riding that way with your dad after cattle when you was a kid. And Iain Rennie asked that old Jangga lady for her daughter’s hand in marriage. You hear a lot of different things said about the old Murris, but they always knew what was coming to them and nothing never surprised them. Grandma’s mother hadn’t seen her daughter for seven or eight years but she give her consent as if it was nothing unusual and Iain Rennie started back for Ranna that same evening. And that was my granddad, Iain Ban Rennie, who they named me after. He was known to be a morally stalwart man and someone to be reckoned with if you should decide to go up against him. It never mattered to Iain Rennie if you was a Murri or a white man, or whatever you was. He treated all men with the same respect. A lesser man than him would have got in trouble for it, but Iain Rennie never did get into trouble, except with your granddad, because he had a way of making people see his point of view and they were inclined to accept it. I never met him. He was killed off his horse before I was born. But I would like to have met him. Sometimes I feel like I did meet him and that he knew me. Which is a funny thing but it’s true. He’s one man I would know if I ever met him and I don’t think either of us would be at all surprised to see the other but we’d just sit down and have a smoke and a yarn together.’ Bo laughed and looked at her. ‘You know what I mean? You ever feel like that about someone you never met?’
Annabelle could not think of anyone in her own life to match with Bo’s feelings for the grandfather he had never met. ‘You make me feel a bit like that about Grandma Rennie, talking about her now the way you are,’ she said. ‘She was always a kind of legend in our lives around Mount Coolon when we were kids and I feel I half know her anyway.’
‘Well that is exactly what I mean,’ Bo said. ‘She’d know you if she met you and she’d make you welcome, like she and Iain made everyone welcome. Their marriage was accepted without a word of dissent in Mount Coolon and around the district, except for your granddad, like I told you. He never spoke to Iain Rennie again. But he was the only one to hold out against them. Everyone else always treated Iain and Grandma Rennie no different to anybody else. And that went for us kids too. That’s the way it was over there at Verbena. When Iain was killed off his horse and Grandma and her sister May inherited the place, them agents and store people in town just went on dealing with Grandma like she was any other station owner. I don’t think any of them would have been game to go up against her anyway. She was just like Iain in that. She had a way with her that made people act respectfully towards her, like she was expecting it from them.’
Annabelle said, ‘Why was my grandfather so different, do you think?’
‘Well I don’t think he was all that different to most people in them days. He just never made an exception for Iain and Grandma. It was the others around Mount Coolon agreeing to be exceptional that made him look different if you ask me. But I don’t know why. Like I told you down there at Burranbah, us kids was frightened of him. And I think we was frightened of him because of the way Grandma made us feel about him as much as anything he ever did. I don’t remember him ever getting close enough to belt any of us. But he and Grandma must have known something the rest of us never heard about.’ Bo fell silent, interrogating his memory of Annabelle’s grandfather sitting his horse under the yellowbox tree outside the garden fence at Verbena while her father was inside drinking tea and dealing with Grandma Rennie for the Verbena steers. He shook his head, ‘I don’t know what it was. It was never explained to us. But it was something, I know that.’ He sat thinking. ‘Grandma and Iain Rennie was married in the Presbyterian church in Mount Coolon. Every pew in that church was filled with a mixture of Jangga and European people. Even the sergeant of police was there. I don’t think that ever happened before or since. It must have been some occasion. We never got sick of hearing Grandma tell us about it.’ He chuckled throatily, ‘That Katherine Bigges was so disappointed she went away to the coast and become a schoolteacher in Bowen. She died there eventually. And never was married. None of them three Bigges girls was ever married. I believe the whole clan of them Bigges has finally died out altogether.’ He looked at Annabelle. ‘It looks like I’m telling you about my people.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t usually say too much, but you’re gonna find that hard to believe.’ He stayed twisted around in the chair looking at her.
She said, ‘You’re telling me a lot I never heard, about my mother and grandfather too. I hope you’re not going to stop?’
‘Telling you now is the next best thing to you meeting my grandmother face to face. I believe you two would have got along pretty special. She met Elizabeth a few times but I don’t think they ever hit it off.’
‘Elizabeth was closer to granddad than I was.’
‘Yes she was. And maybe that explains it.’ He sat thinking. ‘Grandma was only twenty-eight when Iain was killed off his horse. She was broken hearted. She buried him in that virgin bendee scrub way up Verbena Creek, near them playgrounds of the old people. I know the spot. If you and me ever go up that way I’ll show it to you. She used to disappear for a day or two every now and then when I was a kid. We knew she’d gone up there to camp alongside Iain. She’d sing to him and to the old people. There wasn’t no distinctions for her. She always told us, what’s good for one is good for everyone. And she’d share out the good things accordingly with whoever come along. I followed her up there one time when I was ten or eleven. I kept well clear of her, and I dry camped at night without a fire. She knew I was tracking her, but she never doubled back and reproached me. So I reckoned she must’ve wanted me to follow her so I’d see where she’d buried my granddad. Then I’d know where to bury her when the time come for me to do it. Which was not something we ever talked about but it was understood and agreed upon between us.’ He fell silent. ‘They loved that country and they loved each other. My old feller named me after him and I don’t think there was anyone my dad admired more than his own dad. I learned most of what I know about horses and cattle from my dad. He was a very quiet man, a little bit solemn some people said. He wasn’t big to look at and he rode a clean type of piebald pony that he bred up himself on Verbena specially for that scrub country. I heard him reprimand a couple of fellers there one time for speaking out of turn in Grandma’s presence. They come up to the house and apologised afterwards. But I never in all the years I knew him saw him do any violence. I don’t think he needed to in order to make his point. I don’t believe I ever heard him raise his voice to a man or to a child or to a horse. He’d just give you that sideways look of his and you’d know you got it wrong and you’d curse your own self for being so stupid. But he never said nothing. When me and Dougald was working cattle with him he expected us to go along without ever speaking. We’d go for days, rain and fine weather, without saying nothing, the three of us. Just look across and see what the other feller was lining up to do and we’d get that little action of the hand from dad that would tell us everything. That was our sign language in the scrubs. We’d slip through that creaking bendee like moon shadows, our ponies looking out for signs just the same as us, stepping lightly as if we was visitors. I can see my dad’s fingers angling out right now letting me know t
here was cattle camped up ahead of us and that we was to leave them and go on around and come back later in the evening to pick them up when they was ready to move to water. He never liked to move a beast against the way it naturally wanted to move. There was never no rip tear and bust with dad. He always waited his time, and he moved when it was the time to move, not too soon and not too late. So things was always going sweetly when you was with dad in the scrub and a lot of fellers never understood why that was, because he never seemed to be doing much of anything and we’d be gathering up the cattle all the same. You got the feeling the cattle was waiting for us to come through and find them. But me and Dougald understood him and we tried to be as like him as it was possible to be. I had some of it, but Dougald got it better than me. And dad seen that. But he never said nothing about it to neither of us. So me and Dougald stayed friends and I worked for him after Dougald started contract mustering on his own when my dad no longer had a use for us. I’d see Dougald doing things just the way dad used to do them. He’d talk with his hands. Let you know he was gonna ride on ahead and you was to pull up for lunchcamp in a stand of sandalwood, and then he’d circle around and come up on you a while later. He’d step down off his horse and you’d know he’d seen something, but he’d just squat by the fire and stick his quart in the ashes and he’d have finished his tea and lunch about the same time as the rest of us. He was just the way dad was. He never liked to disturb nothing on the way through. Leave it just the way it was. So it looks like a big turn around for Dougald to people who don’t know him the way he’s giving his support to this Ranna Dam, but it’s his decision and it’s not something he’s gonna discuss with Susan. Which she don’t understand. I always had the feeling with my dad and Dougald Gnapun that they was doin their talking inside their heads and that things was talkin right back to them. I remember one night we was camped in them Leichhardt Ranges in that wild broken country up the head of Pandanus Creek. It was a cold miserable camp too. We’d had rain for a week and no hope of getting home and dry for days yet. Everything was so wet we’d been building our dinner fires in ants’ nests with a bit of dry stuff we carried with us. I was sitting across the fire from Dougald. The scrubs as black as pitch and just that glow of the ants’ nest oven on his face. I looked into his eyes and I seen he wasn’t with us. I’d only seen that look once before in the eyes of an old Murri woman in Mount Coolon they used to call Panya. It give me a scare to see it in Dougald’s eyes, I can tell you. But Dougald was away that night with the old people and I knew it. I never said nothing the next day and he didn’t neither. I believe he give the knack of it to that boy of his, Arner. He’s got it, that boy. There’s some direct thing from the old people in him. You can feel it. He’s not with us fellers.’ Bo laughed and hauled himself upright in the chair. ‘This your old dad’s chair?’ he asked, as if he had finished with storytelling.
Annabelle looked at him, her mind still back in the scrub with Dougald and Bo and his father and the old days. She was remembering the way the ringers came out of the scrub and tailed the bawling cattle to the yards. Scarcely a voice raised. The occasional lazy crack of a stockwhip or a mild voice urging a reluctant beast. It was true as Bo told it. They were like moon shadows from another place, another time, as if they belonged in the scrub and could not be who they were when they were out of it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said absently. ‘I don’t think mum and dad had special chairs.’
He laughed. ‘This one’s your dad’s, for sure,’ he said. ‘She’s more bowed and worn down than that feller you’re sitting in. I remember he smoked a pipe, your dad. All this tight woven cane down the side here’s filled up with tobacco ash.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘I’d better be slipping along. I promised my sister I’d take her to the pool at four to see her kid swim. They’re doin the interschool races tonight. He’s eleven. They’re expecting him to get into the final.’
She walked with him to the Pajero.
He leaned out. ‘See you Monday morning.’
‘What time?’
‘Daybreak.’
She stood and watched him back down the sideway. The white cat came and pressed itself against her leg and stood with her. When he’d gone she turned and went inside the house. She cleared the lunch table and washed the dishes, standing at the sink looking out at the lemon tree. She laughed and said aloud, ‘What do you think of Bo Rennie now, mum?’
Zigzag
WHEN BO CALLED FOR ANNABELLE ON MONDAY MORNING AT FOUR-thirty she was showered and dressed and ready to go. The eastern sky was still silver with the last of night. The cat came out and watched them leave. Bo said, ‘Mister White’s gonna take care of the place for you.’ They left Zamia Street behind and headed south along the Bruce Highway towards the Burdekin River bridge. The wooded heights of Mount Stuart on their right hand, the timber-tops gold and crimson in the light of the rising sun. Carcasses of roadkilled wallabies sprawled along the verges, as if they were the victims of a night assault by stealthy assassins. Merle Haggard singing, I’m gonna break every heart I can, I’ll be a fine dumb fool of a man, the tempo of the guitar syncopating with the road rhythm of the speeding Pajero.
Annabelle looked out through the sidewindow, watching the scrub going by. She turned and looked at Bo, the excitement of travelling catching at her heart.
He grinned. ‘On this old highway again, Annabellebeck.’
It was four hours later when Bo pulled off the tar and parked alongside Arner’s white truck on the patch of scuffed kikuyu grass outside Dougald’s weatherboard in Maryvale. Woodsmoke curling from the stovepipe on the roof, the front door standing open to the morning behind the flyscreen. They stepped down from the Pajero and Annabelle followed Bo onto the verandah. He pulled aside the flywire and stood by to let her go in ahead of him. Arner and Trace were sitting up at the table eating eggs and bacon and sausages. Dougald standing over by the stove cooking. A smell of bacon and coffee and frying meat. Cartoons loud on the teevee. Trace’s white hardhat sitting on the middle pool trophy.
Everyone murmured their hellos and Bo pushed aside the old newspapers and magazines and made room at the table. He went back into the kitchen with Dougald and fetched knives and forks. Annabelle took off her sunglasses. She set her grey felt hat on its crown on the papers and put the sunglasses inside it.
Trace was watching her. ‘Your hair looks nice.’
Annabelle put her hand to her hair and ruffled it. ‘Thanks. I went to Susan’s hairdresser.’
Trace kept looking at her.
Annabelle and Bo sat at the table across from Arner and Trace.
Bo rolled a smoke.
Dougald turned from the stove and waved the alligator tongs at the frying pan in his hand. ‘You want a piece of steak with yours, Annabelle?’
‘No thank you, Dougald,’ Annabelle said.
‘There’s plenty of food,’ Dougald reassured her solemnly, his voice slow and heavy, as if some deep concern weighed upon his thoughts.
Annabelle looked at him. She would like to have said something, but his manner distanced him. Their gazes locked for an instant of uncertain inquiry. ‘I’m right thanks, Dougald,’ she said. ‘An egg and a rasher of bacon will be fine.’
Dougald turned back to the stove. ‘Bo and Arner’ll eat it.’ He dished up, then came over and set a plate of food in front of Bo and another in front of Annabelle. His blood-flow monitor bulged under his shirt above the waistband of his pants, as if he was wired to a concealed tape recorder. He forked a piece of steak from the pan and set it on Arner’s plate. Arner murmured his thanks.
Bo nipped the lighted end off his cigarette with his thumb and forefinger and stuck the cigarette to the edge of the table beside his plate, pressing the damp end into the wood. He turned to Arner, ‘You got that truck all packed? Me and Annabelle are heading out as soon as we’ve eaten this. We’re not gonna be hanging around.’
Arner did not look up from his meal. ‘She’s packed,’ he replied softly, withdrawn from them and aloof. Th
ey all looked at him, except Trace, and she looked at Annabelle. It was as if they waited for a disclosure from the silent young man. They watched him cut his steak with the knife, an absorbed attention in his actions, as if cutting the steak required from him the orderly procedure of a priestly office. His hair freshly shorn close to his scalp, his Spanish grandee’s beard chiselled to an even centimetre. The smoky morning of the room setting highlights to the bronze at his temples and cheekbones.