Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘On the floor in my room, she brought her own bedding.’

  ‘In your bedroom! She’s moved in, taken over your bedroom! Why, the bloody cheek of the woman!’

  ‘No, Mum, she’s sleeping on the floor, there’s plenty of room, she’s very quiet and doesn’t snore, it’s nice to know there’s someone there if something happens in the night.’

  ‘You just told me nothing can happen, that it’s all organised. Now it’s nice to have somebody in case something happens? Right! That does it, I’m comin’ down. If something happens, you need your mum not that old herb witch.’

  ‘Please, Mum! I can’t share my bed with you, it’s a single, an army cot we got from the disposal.’

  ‘We’ll take the Diamond T, bring the double bed and the Singer. I’ll help Sophie all she needs with her sewing.’

  ‘What about the garbage, you can’t leave the garbage,’ Sarah cries desperately.

  ‘We’ll come down Saturday, Bozo and the boys can drive back Sunday, they’ll just have to manage without me for a week. Tommy’s back from the bush, he’ll have to stay on the wagon long enough to help with the garbage while I take care of me precious daughter!’

  ‘Mum, I don’t need taking care of! What about little Colleen? Bozo hasn’t got his driving licence!’ Sarah’s clutching at straws.

  ‘Little Colleen? She’s comin’too, bed’s been big enough before, it will be big enough again. Bozo can get a note about his licence from Big Jack Donovan. Don’t try to stop me, girl, I’ve made up me mind. We’re comin’ down Saturday. You send that woman packin’ you hear me now?

  ’Cause your mum’s comin’ to take care of you, darling.’ ‘Mum, there isn’t room, it’s a tiny house!’

  ‘There’s room for her!’

  ‘Mum, you’re four of her! Pleeease Mum!’ Nancy bangs down the phone before Sarah can say anything else.

  That night when we’re having our tea, Nancy announces out of the blue. ‘Indian woman’s having another go at getting rid of Sarah’s belly, we’ve got to go down to Melbourne to rescue her.’

  ‘Whaddayamean?’ Mike cries in alarm. ‘Mrs Rika Ray? She wouldn’t do that, she loves Sarah!’

  ‘Huh! Loves her, does she? It was her tried to get rid of Sarah’s baby the first time!’

  ‘Mum, that’s not how it happened,’ I protest. ‘You know it wasn’t.’

  Nancy ignores me, ‘Bozo, better make sure the Diamond T is all right.’

  ‘It ain’t, Mum, the tyres won’t make it, no way. You’ll have to go by train, be lucky if I can get the Diamond T to Wang and back.’

  ‘I can’t take the train, we’re taking my bed and the Singer sewing machine, leaving Saturday, you three will drive back Sunday, do the garbage run with Tommy next week.’

  ‘Mum, I just told you, I haven’t a licence, the tyres are ratshit, we’ll never make it!’ Bozo cries. ‘Tell us, what’s happened to Sarah?’

  ‘Black woman’s sleeping with her.’

  ‘What!!’ we all shout together.

  ‘Waiting for something to happen so she can pounce on the baby!’

  It takes about ten minutes to get the whole story out of Nancy and it doesn’t take us too long to figure out that Nancy Maloney is not what Sarah needs in the last stages of her pregnancy.

  But we also know that, come Saturday, we’ll be on the road to Melbourne with her double bed and sewing machine in the back of the Diamond T. Nancy is riding to the rescue and if we have to push the Diamond T all the way to Melbourne, that’s where we’re going.

  I quite like the idea of going to Melbourne. I’ve only been there the once when we went to the Show and Mike got Best of Show and Bozo fought the Aboriginal bloke. But I’m also dead disappointed, because Tommy has arranged for me to go hunting Saturday with him and John Crowe, who’s going to teach me to fire a .22 rifle.

  You remember John Crowe? He was the bloke who found the corrugated iron that fell off a truck for Mrs Rika Ray’s hut and also helped to build it, him and Ian McTavish and Tommy and me when the bottoms-wipingcertificate fire burned her old hut down.

  We’re going after foxes and rabbits and feral cats. Though Tommy says not to talk about the cats because even though they’re vermin and kill the wildlife, people get funny about cats, even some country women who should know better. Tommy can’t teach me to shoot by example, because of his crook shoulder and his one eye missing. He can’t use a rifle no more so he’s asked John Crowe, because you can’t be a proper bushie if you can’t fire a rifle.

  As you can see, having to go to Melbourne is a bit of a big disappointment as well as not a bad thing to do if we ever get there.

  Bozo says we’ve got Buckley’s, the tyres are history. Two are showing canvas and the other two are so smooth the tread wouldn’t trip a bull ant up if it was running at top speed. It looks like I’m not going shooting and that we’ll spend the weekend somewhere on the road to Melbourne, most likely about fifty miles down the road where we’ll starve all weekend. Bozo begs Nancy to see some sense and take the train, but she won’t.

  Bozo’s serious about the Diamond T. No ifs or maybes, it can’t make it to Melbourne. We should have been on offal a month ago to save for retreads on the back two tyres, but Nancy’s been so distracted by Sarah’s baby that she’s forgot and the tyres are on their last legs.

  ‘We’re going to Melbourne, to our darling Sarah, that’s all there is to it, Bozo!’ is what she says to him when he persists. By now she’s convinced herself the baby’s life is in danger. Sarah’s tried to phone her, getting Dotty Ryan to call from the exchange, because Nancy hasn’t been making her six-thirty calls since she told Sarah she was coming to the rescue. Nancy tells Dotty Ryan to tell Sarah we’ll see her Saturday night. She’s scared Sarah will come up with a good reason why we shouldn’t go.

  I tell Tommy I’m not going to be able to go shooting with him and John Crowe. He tells me I’d better go and see him, tell him myself, because the whole idea was to begin to teach me to shoot and John’s giving up his Saturday because Tommy’s asked him special.

  ‘Better go see John down at the council depot, mate,’ Tommy says, shaking his head, because he knows it’s not my fault. I can’t go against Nancy’s wishes and him asking her would only make matters worse. Nancy wants all her kids around her, we’re like her security blanket, she’s missing Sarah something terrible, which is more than half the reason we’re going.

  So after school I walk to the workshops where they repair the shire trucks to see John Crowe. I ask a bloke in blue overalls where I can find him. He points to a truck in the lube bay. ‘He’s under the Dodge,’ he says.

  When I get to the truck I stand for a while. I can see this pair of legs sticking out from under it, but I don’t want to disturb him. You know, just call out to him. Nancy says you have to always look a man in the eye when you talk to him and all I can see is a pair of boots with no socks on and a part of his hairy legs that are spotted with grease. There’s grunts coming from under the truck like he’s struggling with something, then, ‘Shit! Bastard, Whore!’ and a spanner comes flying out from under the truck. I think maybe I should come back later but after a few moments I cough and say, ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah, bastard nut on the oil sump, tight as a nun’s pussy! Who’s askin’?’ ‘Mole. Mole Maloney.’

  Then there’s the clatter of those little iron wheels on one of those platforms on which mechanics lie on their backs to slide under a truck. The legs become a body in dirty khaki shorts and blue singlet and then it’s him. ‘Gidday, Mole, what brings you to this neck o’ the woods?’ John Crowe says, looking up at me.

  I tell him about going to Melbourne to see Sarah and that Nancy’s gunna stay for when the baby comes so I can’t get a shooting lesson.

  ‘Baby! I’ve already lost a fortune on your sister’s baby. Had three goes at guessing and the little bu
gger still ain’t come.’ He stands up meanwhile and laughs and puts his hand on my shoulder. I can only hope grease stains come off in the wash or I’m in the shit with Nancy. ‘Melbourne, eh?’

  ‘I’m sorry about not going shooting. I really was looking forward to it.’

  ‘That’s all right, mate, we’ll do it another time, no worries,’ he grins. ‘Foxes and rabbits’ll be happy they’ve been spared your deadly aim.’

  I laugh, he’s a real nice bloke. Then I tell him how it’s all a bit of a waste, because we ain’t gunna get to Melbourne anyway.

  ‘Why’s that?’ he asks.

  I tell him about the Diamond T tyres. ‘Bozo, me brother, says we ain’t got a snowball’s hope in hell, no chance.’

  He rubs his chin and I can see, even though his face is black with grease and shiny with sweat, that he hasn’t shaved in a few days and has got these bristles, some of them already white.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder again and now I’ve got two blotches to worry about. ‘Hey, Mole, we can’t take chances on the road with Bozo, the Boy Boxer, now can we? Bloody good fight he had with the Abo kid, won me two quid, should’ve bet more but the other kid looked so bloody big and strong, know better in future, hey.’

  He turns to watch a truck coming in through the gate and seems to be thinking. ‘Hmm, the Fargo takes the same size of tyres as the Diamond T,’ he says, like he’s thinking aloud. Then he turns back to me. ‘Tell your brother I’ll meet him outside the gates here six o’clock sharp, Friday night. He’s to come in the Diamond T.’

  Well, Bozo turns up at the right time and John Crowe is already waiting. The gates to the shire workshop are locked and chained with all the shire trucks, graders and tractors inside, safe for the weekend. John Crowe unlocks the gates and signals for Bozo to drive the Diamond T into the yard, then he jumps up onto the running board and points to where the Fargo is parked.

  ‘Pull her up next to the Fargo,’ he instructs. Bozo does as he’s told then steps down from the Diamond T. John Crowe looks at him and laughs, ‘Don’t expect there’s anyone gunna arrest you around here for driving without a licence, you and Big Jack Donovan being mates an’ all. Bloody good fight in Wodonga, Bozo.’

  Bozo thanks him and notices that he’s got the big-truck tyre jack under the Fargo and one of the back wheels is already off the ground and the wheel nuts removed.

  ‘We don’t want you to get into any trouble, Mr Crowe,’ Bozo says, worried. I’ve already told him what I think John Crowe has in mind. Bozo’s a bit of a law abider. Being with Big Jack so much, it’s rubbed off on him.

  ‘No worries, old son.’ John Crowe points to the Fargo tyre, ‘We’re only borrowing them tyres for the weekend, do them good to get a couple of hundred miles on a straight road, warm them up, keep the rubber expanding correct. We’re doing the shire a big favour, not that those bastards would appreciate it, you get no thanks around here for trying to be helpful.’

  Bozo thinks it’s probably bullshit about tyres needing expanding and all that, but they get to work and in about an hour they’ve swapped all the tyres over. The Diamond T has never had six good tyres on her at the one time since Tommy got her from the US Army disposal.

  ‘Be bloody sure you’re back Sunday night, Bozo. It don’t matter how late, just get to my place before five o’clock in the mornin’,’ John Crowe warns and then laughs, ‘or they’ll have my guts for garters! Come round the back, bang on the bedroom window, the missus will wake up and let you in.’ Then he asks, ‘Okay for petrol? Might as well fill her up, hey? We’ll call it natural dissipation, evaporation, it happens with petrol all the time, act of nature.’

  I’m beginning to understand how come that corrugated iron we used for Mrs Rika Ray’s roof fell off a truck.

  Meanwhile, on that same Friday night, no I’m wrong, because it’s already Saturday morning, isn’t it, but early, before even we leave Yankalillee, things are beginning to go wrong in Melbourne.

  First thing, Morrie’s had to swap his shift and is doing the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., because it’s a payback for when we all went to Mrs Barrington-Stone’s place. The late-night lift driver’s niece is having her engagement party at the Salvation Army Hall in Fitzroy. No grog because her fiancé is in the Salvation Army band and is a born-again Christian. Morrie is dead anxious, knowing Sarah could come any time, but Joe Bloggs the foreman says it’s still only ten or fifteen minutes in the van for him to get to Carlton from the Age, probably less that time of the night.

  At least Mrs Rika Ray is there and she’ll know what to do if the labour pains start to come. Mrs Rika Ray isn’t taking any chances with Sarah. On the floor beside her mattress she has a pile of newspapers. Morrie gets the early-morning edition of the Age for free when he knocks off every night and Mrs Rika Ray has several beside her bed. ‘Newspaper very, very sterile,’ she says. When Sarah looks doubtful, Morrie confirms this, newsprint ink is a powerful disinfectant he assures her.

  Mrs Rika Ray also has him bring home two newspapers unopened every night and she sterilises a pair of scissors and a sort of rubber-bulb contraption she’s brought with her and she boils two short pieces of string. Then she carefully removes the centre pages of the unopened news papers and wraps the scissors and the rubber contraption in it, together with the two lengths of string. She does this all over again every night just before she goes to bed. She also has a small enamel basin, two flannels and a jug of boiled water beside her bed as well as a jar of potassium permanganate and a jar of seaweed extract and other assorted herbs.

  Early on the Saturday morning we’re supposed to leave Yankalillee for Melbourne, Sarah wakes up feeling strange and then she gasps in dismay, because she’s discovered she’s pissed her bed. The sheet is sopping wet between her legs and so is her nightie. For a moment she’s horrified, then, almost at once, she realises it isn’t what she thought, that her waters have broken (whatever that is). It’s not her that’s wet the bed, it’s the first sign the baby is coming.

  Suddenly she gets this pain. Later she tells us, ‘It’s a vicelike pain across my tummy and it takes my breath away. I want to scream, but I think I’ll wake Mrs Rika Ray up, yet I can’t help myself. The pain is so bad I start to sob and groan because it’s getting worse and I’m sure I’m going to die.’

  Mrs Rika Ray, who’s sleeping on a hair trigger, hears Sarah in her sleep and she’s up in a flash and runs down the passage to the door of Morrie and Sophie’s bedroom and knocks loudly. ‘Sophie! Sophie! Waking up please. Come quickly, we are needing boiled water and the towels!’ she cries.

  Sophie wakes up and sits bolt upright in bed, she thinks she’s in Poland. ‘O borze oni ida Maurice gestapo po nas przysli chca nas zabrac’ (‘Oh God, they are coming, Maurice. It’s the Gestapo, they are coming for us!’), she yells in Polish.

  But then she must have realised what was happening and she leaps out of bed and hurriedly puts on this pink chenille dressing gown she’s made specially, so that if she has to go to the corner telephone to phone Morrie, she’ll be respectable.

  ‘Bring hot water, Sophie! Baby coming! Put on kettle and pot also for sterilising!’ Mrs Rika Ray shouts from the other bedroom.

  But Sophie has been programmed for a different kind of action, one she’s rehearsed in her mind a hundred times over. She’s got to get to the corner telephone and call Morrie. Now nothing else matters.

  She’s out the front door and has reached the front gate when she remembers the sixpences in the envelope pinned to the door. But the door has slammed behind her and is on a Yale lock and can’t be opened from the outside. Morrie has done it specially, because Sophie needs to know she’s safe when she’s inside the house. So now Sophie can’t get back. It’s two o’clock in the morning and she’s screaming and banging on the door. But Mrs Rika Ray is busy with Sarah, who’s also screaming, and so she doesn’t hear her and can’t come anyway.

  To add to the
catastrophe, Maria and Costa and their family next door have left early the previous evening to catch the train to visit her sister, who is getting married on the weekend to an Australian-Italian who owns a big orchard near Shepparton. At that time in the morning the street is completely deserted. Sophie’s knuckles are practically bleeding from hammering at the door. She’s panicking like mad and can’t think what to do next.

  Meanwhile Mrs Rika Ray can’t wait for towels and hot water because Sarah’s baby isn’t hanging around for anyone. She lays newspaper over the fruit crate Sarah uses for a bedside table and puts all her things down on it, including the newspaper parcel she’s sterilised. Then she spreads thick sheets of newspaper over the bed, lifting Sarah’s legs and bum onto it. As she lifts Sarah’s legs, Sarah’s hit with another excruciating pain and screams out. ‘I need to push, oh God, pleeeease . . . I-have-to-push!’

  ‘You are calming down, please, Sarah, we are getting to pushing when I am examining sliding-out possibilities. Now, please, you must bring your legs up so.’ She grabs a hold of one of Sarah’s legs in each hand and bends them at the knee and pushes her legs back and then slides extra newspaper under her bum and where the baby’s going to come and then has a good look-see at what’s going on inside Sarah.

  ‘Please, I have to push! Oh, oh, it hurts so much! Ahaaawha!! Shit! Shit! Shit!’

  ‘My goodness gracious me, hushings please! Such language, it is not becomings a lady!’ Mrs Rika Ray says calmly. ‘The baby head it is making to slide out perfectly, my dear. I am putting my hand on the top and then you are pushing, Sarah. You are pushing hard and I am holding baby head, it must not come too quickly, we are not wanting tearing of perineum! Push, darling, your baby is sliding out very beautiful, like wet pumpkin pip.’

  Sarah pushes hard and then lets out a scream and her baby comes sliding out into Mrs Rika Ray’s willing hands. She places it between Sarah’s legs and reaches for the little rubber pump contraption and inserts it into the tiny mouth and, pressing on the rubber ball, sucks out the mucus and fluid in the infant’s mouth. The baby’s eyes crinkle up and, balling its tiny fists, the baby starts to scream its head off. She doesn’t have to hold it upside down and spank its bottom like they say you must, because it’s breathing a treat and also yelling its lungs out, which requires a whole heap of breath.