Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  Tommy’s also in the shit with Nancy for letting me go up on the stage at the Mechanics Institute but she says she’ll deal with him later. ‘Mole, you never took the spoon out of the sink!’ she yells at me. ‘Look what’s going to happen now, everyone will want to know who this Mrs Rika Ray is and what we’re doing associating with someone from away, who is a herbalist and some sort of witch doctor! Won’t take them long to put two and two together neither. Then there’ll be more damn silly rumours about Sarah to keep their tongues wagging.’

  ‘The Indian lady said if anyone asked her a girl’s name who’d come to see her, like Sarah did, she’d not remember any such name or person. It’s true, Mum, I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles, you can ask Sarah, that’s what she said to us. She hasn’t talked about Sarah in the Gazette. She didn’t the other night at the Mechanics Institute neither.’

  Then, of course, I remember she mentioned Sarah to Tommy, John Crowe and Ian McTavish when she told Tommy we were both clever. I don’t know if they’re gossips or would even remember because it was when we were sitting in the pool. I decide it’s best not to come clean on that one to Nancy, it would only cause more trouble for me and I’m in enough shit as it is.

  ‘Let’s hope so, Mole,’ Nancy says, becoming a bit more understanding. ‘In the meantime, if anyone asks, you were just mucking around in the bush when you met her.’

  ‘Mum, that’s dumb! People know I don’t muck about in the bush, there’s joe blakes can get yer. I only go with Tommy of a weekend because he knows about snakes.

  ‘Mole, I’m giving you permission to tell a lie. Sometimes you have to for the greater good. You were out bird-nesting or something. Right, there you go, that will do as good as anything, boys sometimes do that, bird-nesting, don’t they? You were out bird-nesting and you come across the humpy and met this old woman.’

  ‘Bird-nesting? They only do that in English comics like Beano and Dandy! I don’t know nothing about birds, except crows and ducks and Mr Dorf’s racing pigeons down the street and, yes, kookaburras, because they eat snakes and make a racket in the early morning and the evening. Ferreting maybe, to get rabbits, only we ain’t got a ferret.’

  ‘No, not ferreting, Mole! I don’t want people to think you go ferreting! Ferrets smell to high heaven, garbage collecting and ferreting ain’t a good combination. Get Tommy to teach you a few bird names, he knows them all,’ Nancy says, like it’s that easy. But I think she quite likes the old lady, though they haven’t yet met. When I told her about the bottoms-wiping certificate she couldn’t stop laughing for five minutes. ‘She sounds like a woman after my own heart!’ she cried. So she hasn’t banned me from seeing Mrs Rika Ray.

  To my surprise when I told her about Philip Templeton, Nancy didn’t go ape-shit. She just said Sarah was lucky he wasn’t going to be her father-in-law and that Dora Templeton was in love with ‘Doctor Bottle’ and the both of them weren’t worth a pinch of ‘you know what’. She also said that Tommy shouldn’t have told me to go up and get the piece of paper which you couldn’t call a proper certificate because it was written out on a typewriter with a worn ribbon and was typical of Philip bloody Templeton. Sarah tried to iron the certificate straight again but it was too far gone. Mike said, ‘What can you expect from that shire mob? They’re that cheapskate they wouldn’t even put it in a frame with a bit of glass around it.’

  But I didn’t really mind because I didn’t deserve the bottoms-wiping certificate anyway and it would only have reminded us that we’d got into even more trouble because of it.

  Nancy is right. Everyone wants to know who Mrs Rika Ray is. She’s not Mrs Karpurika Raychaudhuri any more, she’s Mrs Rika Ray, because that’s what Toby Forbes has called her in the Gazette. ‘The mysterious Mrs Rika Ray from India’ is how people refer to her now.

  Even Crocodile Brown fronts me in the classroom, ‘Mole Maloney, we saw your picture in the Gazette and we all congratulate you.’ He turns to the class, ‘A big clap for Mole Maloney, who makes us all very proud to be Yankalillians.’

  Everyone in the class claps but I don’t think they’re that proud of me or of being Yankalillians neither. It’s because of our garbage collecting. Even if what I done was true, a bit of spare bravery isn’t going to help change the Maloney reputation overnight. So then Crocodile Brown says, ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us how you met the mysterious Mrs Rika Ray from India and led her to safety from the raging inferno?’

  ‘No, sir, it was a lot of bull what they said in the Gazette about me saving her life. I didn’t do nothing, sir. It was Tommy, I mean my dad, and the others, Mr Crowe and Mr McTavish, I just showed them where she lived, but she’d already saved her own life when we got there.’

  I can tell you, I was getting bloody tired of explaining about the tent pole and the carpet with the hole cut into it for air.

  ‘Ah, such modesty in one so young!’ he exclaims and I think he’s being sarcastic. ‘How did you know her whereabouts in the bush in the first place?’ he goes on.

  Uh-oh! Here comes Nancy’s lie for the greater good, ‘I was bird-nesting, sir. Then I come across her house.’I don’t want to say too much because I haven’t thought about how bird-nesting should go and nobody I’ve ever known has done it. But I’ve got a few bird names from Tommy, just in case I get questioned, like I am now.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a bird-nester, Mole!’ Crocodile Brown says. He seems very pleased with this notion. ‘I say,

  I used to go bird-nesting when I was a lad. We’d go rambling in the Fens in Norfolk during school holidays. Perhaps we should compare notes, eh!’ He turns to the class, ‘We’ll make a nature-study lesson from this. Who can name a bird to be commonly found in north-eastern Victoria?’

  Half the hands in our class go up and, I must say, I’m dead surprised.

  ‘Right, you, Noel Johnson,’ Crocodile Brown points to Pissy Johnson.

  ‘Crow and canary, sir!’ All the other hands go down except for Anna Dumb-cow-ski who shouldn’t know a bird because she’s from away and a reffo and comes from Poland.

  ‘Canary? The canary is a caged bird, used as a pet in this part of the world and is not found flying free in the district, Johnson.’ ‘Well, crow then, sir?’

  ‘Yes, all right, crow. What about all the parakeets? The crimson rosella, the galah, the green grass parrot, the sulphur-crested and the glossy black cockatoos?’ Crocodile Brown reels them off just to show he’s smarter than all of us and that Pissy Johnson is an idjit. ‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir,’ Pissy Johnson says.

  Pissy would know about crows because he lives on a farm near Yackandandah. When an animal, a calf or lamb, goes down, the crows come in to land thick and fast and they’ll peck the eyes out of any beast. A bunch of crows can easily kill a lamb or a newborn calf. I’m also surprised he hasn’t said eagle. Tommy says farmers see them as flesheating predators and so they shoot them whenever they can. I’ve seen it myself, these wedge-tailed eagles with their wings stretched out nailed to fence posts by the farmers as a warning to other eagles I suppose. Tommy says if they go on killing them like they are, they’ll soon enough be killed out.

  Anna Dumb-cow-ski still has her hand up and Crocodile turns to her, ‘Yes, Anna?’

  ‘Magpie, sir.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a good one!’ Crocodile Brown smiles. He likes Anna because of the concentration camp, so he doesn’t dump on her like he’s just done with Pissy Johnson. If anyone else had said magpie, he’d have gone crook on them, because it’s also a bird everyone knows but forgets about and isn’t any better than saying a crow. ‘Anyone else?’ Crocodile looks around.

  Somebody says a duck and someone else a dove and Crocodile Brown says what kind of duck and what kind of dove and nobody knows and nobody remembers a kookaburra, which, like the magpie and a crow, is one you always know but can easily forget when you’re asked. It turns out the whole class is the same as me, they know b
ugger-all about birds.

  ‘Right, this is not a rich vein of avian knowledge we’re mining here,’ Crocodile says, ‘So now let’s ask the true birdnester among us.’ He turns to me, ‘Mole Maloney, which nests belonging to our feathered friends have you plundered recently?’

  That’s the problem with parents, they don’t know the kind of shit they can get their kids into. Now I’ve got to lie beyond myself and it’s like Sarah’s always told us, you tell a little lie and then it has to get bigger and bigger until it becomes a whopper. But I also guess what’s behind all Crocodile Brown’s questions is that he wants to know more about Mrs Rika Ray. Probably his wife has set him onto me because of those rats in their garbage can, which he could never prove was us but knows it was.

  I try to remember exactly what Tommy’s told me. So I clear my throat to get a bit more time to think. ‘Sir, there’s the red-browed finch, that’s the most common species of finch around here. It’s got red eyebrows, that’s why it’s called a red brow and then it’s got grey underpants . . .’ The class roars with laughter at the mention of the grey underpants. I did too when Tommy told me that’s what it’s called in bird language. Crocodile Brown holds up his hand for silence. ‘And a golden splash on the side of the neck and then the rest is sort of brownish-gold with a red patch top o’ a longish black tail, sir.’

  ‘A very good description, I know the red-browed Finch very well, loves the grass seed at the edge of my road.’ Crocodile Brown seems pleased with himself for knowing my first bird. ‘The eggs, Mr Maloney, what do the eggs look like?’

  Shit, how would I know that? Tommy hasn’t told me about the eggs. Here we go again! Far as I’m concerned eggs are either white or brown, hen eggs that is, don’t see why birds should be any different. ‘White, sir,’ I say, which is the most common colour with hens.

  ‘Well, well, then, it becomes obvious you know something of bird-nesting, Mole Maloney.’ He stops and looks at the rest of the class. ‘Which is more than I can say for the rest of you lot who are downright ignorant when it comes to things ornithological.’

  I write down the word he’s just said though I’m not sure how to spell it. Sarah will tell me what it means or she’ll make me look it up in the dictionary.

  ‘That will do nicely, thank you, Mr Maloney, we shan’t belabour the point. I can see you know what you’re talking about.’ Crocodile Brown says all this a tad sarcastic like because I’ve given him the info on the red-browed finch a bit parrot fashion, following Tommy’s own words almost exact. ‘I must say I’m surprised, there are depths to you I’ve never plumbed,’ he says. ‘So, as you said, you met this mysterious Indian lady out bird-nesting. Would you consider bringing your bird-egg collection in for the class to see?’

  See what I mean? There’s always a trap. Just when you think you’ve escaped you’re back in the shit and have to tell another lie. ‘Sorry, sir, ’fraid I can’t, sir.’

  ‘It would make an excellent nature-study lesson for us all, maybe this lot of ignoramuses will learn something,’ Crocodile Brown says, pressing the point.

  ‘My dad, he won’t allow it, sir. He says we’re losing too many birds because of the insecticides farmers and orchardists are spraying like Dieldrin and DDT, and then there’s the feral cats who are destroying the bird life and the small rodents and reptiles. He says I can look but I mustn’t take. The eggs must stay in the nest.’

  It’s true enough, it’s what Tommy said when I asked him. I mean what he said about the DDT and how, if I really was a bird-nester, he’d tell me not to take the eggs. Tommy’s also dead against feral cats, who, he says, do the most damage to bird and wildlife. ‘They’ll wipe out a whole species and nobody seems to care. Had my way I’d put a bounty on feral cats, wipe the lot off the face of the earth.’

  The lie for the greater good is getting bigger. But not by so much it’s become a real whopper yet.

  ‘That’s very commendable, Mole Maloney,’ Crocodile says. But I can see he’s disappointed. He thought he had me there and nearly did. I pray he doesn’t go on much longer, it’s easy to forget what you’ve heard when you’re in a bit of a panic like I am at the moment. If he asked for more birds, I was going to give him the painted honeyeater and the superb blue wren, but after that I could have been in big trouble.

  ‘Thank you, Mole, now perhaps we’d better get on with the history lesson meant for this period.’

  So I’ve squeaked through the lie by a hair’s breadth and I don’t have to answer anything about the old lady.

  Tommy’s kept his word to Mrs Rika Ray. Him and the other two men took John Crowe’s ute to cut bark and struts and stakes, and in three days they’ve built a new bark hut for the old lady that is much better than her old one. It even has a three-sided kitchen with a stone fireplace and chimney so when it rains she can still have a fire and cook.

  John Crowe brings some corrugated iron which he says ‘fell off the back of a truck’ and he uses it to put on a proper roof with guttering that won’t ever leak. Lucky, heh? About ten pieces fell off the truck and it must have made a helluva racket landing on the road. All I can say is the driver must have been deaf as a post.

  The fireplace is double-sided, the inside and outside sharing the same chimney. The sides are separated by a steel boiler door taken from an ancient steam engine left in the bush from during the gold-rush days a hundred years before. The door shuts off one half of the fireplace, depending on which side the old lady is cooking. The idea is that if she lights a fire in winter she can cook inside the hut and the fire will also keep the hut nice and warm as well. They’ve also found an old tank for catching rainwater in case there is a drought and the creek runs dry.

  ‘I am counting my blessings because I am meeting you, Master Mole,’ the old lady says to me all the time. There I go again, getting the credit when the others are doing all the work, which is something Nancy says we must never do. But when I tell Tommy, he says it’s okay. John and Ian are good blokes and they understand it’s because I’m a kid and the old lady can’t go telling them every ten minutes how grateful she is, because it would become downright embarrassing to blokes like them.

  It turns out that John Crowe is the expert who can do anything with bush carpentry and he even makes her a bed from native timber using the springs from her old army cot which the fire hadn’t damaged. Only the paint was scalded off. But she has to buy a new mattress because she couldn’t throw the old one in the creek as it would have been just as ruined in water, so she left it to burn. The mattress kept smouldering for days after and smelled a bit like that incense.

  By mid-February Mrs Rika Ray’s herb garden is coming on real good and, because I asked her to, she’s planted a sunflower seed where the other once stood and it’s about eight inches high already.

  I go and see her a bit when I have the time, because now that I’m interested in the bush she says there are lots of things I should know. She’ll teach me about plants and their medicinal properties and although she is Indian and not Aboriginal, she’s learned a bit about Australian plants and will teach me stuff I should know in case I get lost in the bush or fall down a cliff or something.

  Well, by January Sarah is getting bigger and bigger. I mean, you see ladies who are pregnant but you daren’t look properly because you’re not supposed to stare. But now that it’s in front of your very eyes all the time you can’t believe that Sarah could swell up like that and become so sticky-out all of a sudden in only five months.

  Nancy says, ‘God forbid, maybe she’s having twins! I hope not, is all I can think, the last time there were twins, my two aunties up top, it didn’t turn out so good.’ But, Nancy’s only kidding, because she says twins would show up much earlier than five months. One thing I’ll guarantee, whatever she’s having, it’s going to be the best-dressed baby in the universe. Nancy and Sarah and Mike are making sure of that every afternoon on the back verandah, embroidering and s
mocking, probably using every stitch in ‘Wicked Witches’.

  But the good thing is that whatever the town is saying about Sarah, it ain’t coming from us doing anything wrong for a change. Not even the town doctor is involved. Morrie comes with Sophie every week to check Sarah out so not even old Mrs Turkington who works for Dr Hughes in his surgery can pass on any juicy gossip.

  Crocodile Brown making me talk to the class about birds turned out to be a good thing as well. All the kids must have went home and told their parents what had happened and soon enough there’s tongues wagging overtime to everyone in sight and, whether they liked it or not, the bird-nesting theory was the best reason they had for me knowing the mysterious Mrs Rika Ray.

  John Crowe and Ian McTavish turn out not to be gossips. Either that, or they forgot that the old lady mentioned Sarah when we were all sitting in the creek. So the lie for the greater good has worked, though I wouldn’t want to go through the experience too often.

  But that’s the funny thing, I’ve become genuinely interested in birds and Tommy includes them in my lessons when we go bush.

  Then at the end of January ‘the letter’ arrives for Sarah. It’s from Melbourne University. There’s this crest on the envelope so even the postie, Jimmy Phipps, knows where it’s from. Nancy says he’s got a big mouth and you can be sure that the arrival of the long-awaited letter will spread around town like wildfire. It’s been a big month. Earlier Sarah’s matriculation results have come through and she’s got a distinction in every subject and over ninety-five per cent for Biology, Maths and Latin.

  Well, we’re very excited and it’s me who gets the letter from Jimmy Phipps, so I go rushing through, shouting, ‘The letter! It’s the letter! It’s come!’ When anyone says ‘the letter’ it only means one thing and every day for weeks we’ve stored a little joy or sorrow energy in our hearts because maybe this will be the day it comes.

  I give it to Sarah who’s in the kitchen at the time and she says she has to sit down, then uses the envelope like a fan in front of her face. We all go to the back verandah where Nancy is working with Mike. Sarah sits down slowly on the old wicker chair and her hands are shaking as she starts to open it. Then she stops and puts it on her lap, looks out sort of into the backyard and I think I’m going to piss my pants if she doesn’t hurry up and open it.