‘But there’s no circuits left. No shows are set to run.’ Minna shut the little door of the Lighthouse, and her mouth, stroke damage and all, also shut tight.
‘War can’t go on forever,’ said Sept. ‘Meantime can sell a few of those old bullocks come spring.’ He’d heard that Mr Loveliness might also be coming up for sale, which would be another good one. ‘Rest of district might be in trouble but we’ve got those creek flats above the line of the frost. We’ve got our Flagstaff flats.’
‘If pump don’t fail.’
‘Of course pump won’t fail. Unless you jinx it with all your whitterings-on. And Seabreeze—’ Septimus looked outside to the horse still propping and sparring with George’s pony, ‘—I’d say he’ll be good for another ten years at least.’
‘And why you had to get that pony for George I’ll never know. Nothing wrong with Tad. And Lainey could’ve double-banked him if he does get good enough to go to school.’
‘Couldn’t have him keep trying to bridle up the calves now, could we?’
‘Would’ve been a damned sight cheaper.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t know, Min.’ Unable to bear another moment of the smouldering ill will, Noah stood to leave the kitchen.
‘Want snuffing you do, Noah Nancarrow.’ Minna took the chance at a shot at her daughter-in-law’s departing back. ‘Give yourself such airs.’
The worry that saw the friction between Noah and Minna escalating was nothing so much to do with the war, frosts or feed but the underlying and unspoken concern that something was definitely wrong with Roley. Something more than just a chinked back. Something so obvious that the army had just last week knocked him back. And, oh, the collective shame that medically unfit exemption badge promised. Even Minna and Sept were not immune to the shame. It was a shame that was heightened rather than cancelled out by the first war having taken their firstborn twin Dunc.
Roley had been rejected on medically unknown grounds.
‘Write down: Even though clearly sober, cannot walk a straight line,’ the recruitment officer had told the clerk.
And the more you couldn’t mention it, the more everyone tried to pretend that there was nothing much wrong with Rol. That Reenie was going to join the war effort as a nurse was a fact mentioned often, but also in a voice of disbelief at the thought of their Reen if not far away in dangerous and foreign lands, then in Sydney or Brisbane for sure.
Hurry hurry hurry, hup hup hup, Noah heard the hill mock when Roley began to find walking down to the bails a deepening mystery. The pinching little steps would make anyone think he might be bunging it on, only that you knew Roley Nancarrow would never be one to do such a thing.
A horse hurt in the hindquarters will often curve its head around to take a good long look. If Roley thought no one was watching, he might also bend down to his legs as if to work out what invisible harness, hobble or dingo snare might have so trapped his nerves.
The saddest thing of all was that even as their high-jump plans boiled and moved, it was the opposite in Noah and Roley’s bed at night. Nothing stirred anymore, thought Noah sadly. Nothing. In the afternoons the flickering winter light landing on the empty bed was hauntingly beautiful to see. Say Noah had to dash in to find something warmer to put on to cope with the winter winds, she couldn’t help but think what an unhappy lonely place that bed was set to become once bedtime arrived.
That numbness had hit that high up now. What could you say? Who could you flaming well tell? The puzzle haunted her days. Not Reenie, who at any rate had gone to Sydney to help nurse the returning wounded just beginning to come in. And the more you couldn’t mention it, the more Noah began to go crazy with a longing she’d lost the easy way to fulfil.
‘So much the worse!’ she wanted to shout, but it wouldn’t do. She cast around for someone to confide in.
Aunty Mad began to cackle when Noah made a start at the boarding house.
‘You need to know, Noey, that that’s just how it always is. Honeymoon over. I’ve known many a young father needs revving up once a few years have gone by. You should count your lucky stars, I say. Ration cards and all. Don’t really want another mouth to feed, do ya? But here. I might have something that’ll help revive his interest, so to speak.’
And from a suitcase underneath her bed she drew out some old undergarments, the lace so clotted together with age it looked like spider webs had run amok in there.
Noah looked in shock at her aunt’s face. What could this old maid know? Aunty Mad always kept her eyebrows plucked into a thin curve that she filled in with pencil. Now the real eyebrows and the fake were moving rapidly up and down with the joy of her generosity. ‘You just put these on under your nightie one time and have a see what happens. I was once about your size so should be a good fit.’
Noah took possession of the offerings, her misgivings tinged with hope.
‘And don’t look so serious all the time. I was commenting to Mil last time we saw you that you’re developing a real scowl. Put any man off it would.’
‘Watch out,’ called Sept the morning of the heart attack that would take him.
Roley moved to avoid the kick of the old lead cow. The stiffness in his legs meant the cow just clipped him.
‘Reckon get leg rope on her first.’
His father passed over a rope. ‘Breezy seems settled in nicely. Old Gurlie looks pretty good too. Mind, reckon her foal will be a late one. Maybe shouldn’t have had her served so late but since it was her last chance . . .’ Sept held out the tin of Rawleigh’s.
Roley took a good dollop of the ointment on his finger. One teat of the cow had been cut pretty bad on barbed wire and boy, when in pain could the old girl kick. ‘We’ll only bring Gurlie up into home paddock next year,’ he said. ‘Save on a bit of feed that way and she seems to be happy enough down there.’
‘And I might see if I can’t get the chaffer goin again,’ pondered his father. ‘Probably Len’d let us have some of his oat bales. We’ll whack some of that into Gurlie too.’
They heard the separator clink and spin to a stop.
Then, ‘Watch out,’ shouted his father again. But this time it was at the ocean of pain rolling inside his chest.
‘Next thing,’ Roley would tell, ‘Dad was down. Knew he wasn’t ever gunna be getting back up the moment I turned round. Knew he was gawn.’
Septimus Nancarrow was dead, and not even Rawleigh’s, good for man or beast, a gob of which had dropped from Roley’s finger onto his father’s face, was able to revive a dairy farmer with that much bacon fat around his heart it was a wonder he hadn’t gone two decades sooner like his own father before him.
Steel yourself, thought Minna, seeing Roley coming bareback up the hill at a gallop riding the old grey show jumper in nothing but a cow halter. ‘Steel yourself, Mum,’ she uttered aloud as her only living son slipped off the horse, hooked the halter rope over a home paddock post and, looking for all the world like he was trying to waltz on sloping ground, began his strange hop-and-jig walk in her direction.
The unusual sensation of tears made her dash them angrily away but still, like a rusty sprinkler when the pump was playing up, they insisted on their right to flow.
‘Least he died with his boots on, Min.’ On the day of the funeral the old words of comfort sprang without thought from the side of Noah’s mouth.
‘Wouldn’t have wanted it any other way,’ agreed Ralda in Main House; thinking, roasts won’t ever be sliced so thin again. The look of the jacaranda moving in the nor’-westerly sprung up out of nowhere was like herself. A kind look, a soft look. If the tree resembled any one of them it was Ralda. The leaves at the top were just turning yellow, which gave it a strange, top-heavy effect.
‘Only Dad had the true knack when it came to sharpening that old carving knife. Never a chance for him to bade us goodbye.’ Ralda blew her nose on a kitchen cloth because her hankie was as if soaked in the sink. ‘And I was makin his favourite brawn and all.’
Ralda had been
in the kitchen full of the excitement of boiling down a pig’s head when Min and Rol, with the news across every inch of their faces, had come in. The Lighthouse was all stoked up, the firebox roaring. When her brother began to speak the pig’s face bobbed up and down in the biggest pot on top. It had been the crankiest old sow and making brawn was never going to be the same again.
Lainey, coming in, saw ants in the stove’s firebox. She watched their burning legs glow red and then go up and down, up and down, as if dancing as they told her she was never going to see Pop again. And Aunty Ral it was saying that she must be a good girl now and take extra good care of George, because kind Uncle Angus was going to take them to Port Lake for the day.
The priest, never one to miss a chance, began the service almost immediately with a rant about how neglectful Septimus Nancarrow had become of his church.
‘If Sept could jump out of his box he’d put the boot into him, wouldn’t you say?’ muttered Jim Loxton to Roley. Along the pew on the other side were all of the Lightfoot cousins.
‘And let it be a lesson to them all,’ Father John raved. No stopping him now.
‘Dad would bop him one for sure,’ agreed Roley.
‘Let death find none of them not ready.’
But what about if it were only your legs that had decided to die ahead of the rest of you? What about that? Roley would’ve liked to ask his priest. For when it did come his turn, no one would be saying he died with his boots bloody on. Where had his feet gone? More and more often lately to have at least some idea of their whereabouts, he’d taken to going around One Tree with his feet bare.
‘Jeez,’ his father had said, as if he had a choice. ‘What you flaming well up to, Rol? You’ll give Mum a heart attack. She’ll think it’s old Henry Holkins scooting over the frost like that.’
Now, at the funeral of his father, some panic was beginning to stream. Hefting his share of his father’s coffin onto his shoulders, for a moment there his feet nearly went from under him.
‘Died with his boots on, Angus,’ Roley said, picking up the children at the end of the day. As if that phrase held some greater secret, had become the password—though to what exactly, nobody knew. He wanted to say something more.
‘I’m sorry, Rol,’ Angus began. ‘If there’s anything—’
Roley cut him off with the weather. ‘Good that the rain held off. How about on the coast?’
‘Oh, we got a dazzling day. That warm had to persuade George we weren’t there for a winter swim.’
‘Well go on, Lainey, George. Where’s your manners? You say thank you to kind Mr Cousins. Were they good?’
‘We went to the sea,’ cried Lainey. ‘Et fish and chips ’cept George cried about the seagulls.’
‘Go on, George. You say ta too.’
‘Ta.’
The birds with their red eyes had tried to take her brother’s chips off him. There had been a white horse and a white lighthouse that looked like they belonged wherever it was Pop had gone. But it was the sea so far down below that really had upset George, she reckoned. The white froth smashing onto dark rocks with the savagery of a hundred horses striking.
To drive the Ford that he supposed must now belong to his mother, just to be on the safe side Roley took off his boots. ‘No, George, you don’t have to take yours off. Dad’s just trying something out.’
‘Dad!’ shouted Lainey when the moon had come up and was shining full on her face through the window. ‘Dad! Will ya put the moon away!’ Then fell straight back to sleep before he’d even pulled the curtain. Next George woke up.
But in truth Roley felt glad of the legitimate diversion keeping him from going to bed himself.
‘Shush up now, George. Don’t want to wake your sister. You snuggle up there next to Laine.’
Still his son cried on, as if his broken-hearted little pudding of a face was the only thing on One Tree that could afford to express the grief.
‘Here,’ said Roley. ‘Here, people will have every right to call you a loony if you carry on like that. And we know you’re not that. You’re George. George Nancarrow, and that’s the long and the short of it. But stop crying now. You’ll wake Lainey.’ He went to fetch out of the oven of their hut’s little stove the hot rock he’d planned to take in for Noah. He slipped it into one of the bags Ralda had sewn. ‘You hold onto that, George. Don’t want to wake up Mum, do we?’
George was sitting up now. Crying harder.
‘Hold your rock. It’ll help.’ Roley put his arm around the shirt George slept in that was as patched and mended as any old pony rug. ‘Atta boy. If we wake everyone up that’ll be no good for tomorrow’s milking now, will it? No! And in his time your Pop were the fastest after your mum to strip out a cow. Remember what Ral said? Can only meet your Pop in your dreams now, George. We gunna be in for it. We’ll need our strength.
‘No need to cry. Look at how that Fly goes for you, hey? You’ve never even fallen off yet. Better than me. I was just three when your Pop put me up onto one of his plough horses. The bugger downed his head and over I went! My first jump but in the wrong direction.
‘That’s good, that’s the way.’ For George, remembering the comfort of his thumb in his mouth, had jammed it in and was pulling the scrap of blanket Ralda called his Ruggy up and down his little squashed-in nose. The strange late sou’-westerly still hadn’t blown itself out. Roley could hear the tiny leaves of the jaca as they skittered and skipped across their bare home paddock.
‘Oh dearie me,’ called out Ralda from Main House, rolling over in sleep.
‘Oh dearie me,’ George heard the waterbirds down on Flaggy call back, which set him sobbing all over again.
Minna, about to fall asleep lying on her back, hadn’t allowed herself to register yet that there would never be another night when Sept’s snores tried to rise above her own. The bed was much colder though, so roomy, and Sept’s pillow where she rested her head smelt just like his hat.
‘Disasters.’ She sat up and remembered to take out her teeth. Her mouth collapsed. Never again to see that of her husband’s mouth. With his teeth in you’d swear he was only bloody fifty year old. Teeth out and his mouth turned about one hundred and twenty. She ran her mind over other deaths, the first obvious few. Duncan. Of course, in the first war in that land so far away. But closer to home, her own Pop killed when the load of logs broke adrift and fell fair on top of him. Had to be dragged on out from gully tied to the tail of his horse. Her own little brother Jack, kicked in the heart by a horse and dead by the time Owen carried him home. Or disasters of a stranger kind. Old Cliff Cathouse born for heaven’s sake with no roof to his mouth. Or that woman of whatsername. Tractor wheel ran over her head and popped out her eyes, they said. Dangerous things, tractors, but it hadn’t stopped Sept having one on order for One Tree. For the flats, not the slopes, he’d growled.
Noah, waiting in bed, thought this might be the right night. To give Roley the nicest consolation of all. To take their mind off the funeral. To comfort each other in the best way.
Standing up, she pulled out from the back of her drawer the gift from Aunty Mad. Solemnly, sadly, but swiftly too for the night was freezing, wind howling in through cracks in the boards, she pulled on the garment and did up as many of the hooks and eyes, in as right a configuration, as she could manage. It was as hard as learning to plait in the round for a whip. Devilish tricky. Giving up, she pulled her own nightie back on and the dressing gown over that and didn’t know if she was glad he was late coming in to bed or fed up. But in all the waiting her heart began to go faster. She checked the wick of the fat candle, wished her bosoms were big enough to properly fill the cups, and lay back down.
‘What is it, George, what is it?’ repeated Roley until it sounded to Noah, wide awake and listening, that her husband and George were making up some kind of song. Nothing to do with Sept, whose time it had been. ‘What is it, George, oh, what is it?’ A song about the ongoing and mysterious decline of Roley, who’d just last week
turned thirty-eight.
Can no longer walk a straight line! What did that army man know? When not so long ago look down any one of Roley’s rows of corn and see light at the end. Straighter than any bloody battalion of marching soldiers. His unerring eye behind the plough.
At least, Roley was thinking, laying George back down next to Lainey, at least one good thing about his father’s passing was that it was going to take away a lot of the shame of being knocked back by the army.
Good you’ve got Rol, he’d heard probably a dozen people telling his mother. They need the best farmers to stay behind. Keep the food growing. That sort of thing.
His daughter’s mouth moved in the way of a fresh-born foal facing the world in its first brave days. Her jaws opened and shut. There was the snop and grind of small white teeth.
‘What is it, George, what is it?’
Something that must never be put into words.
‘What is it, George, George, George?’ whispered the wall boards Sept’s father had used to line the original hut of One Tree’s roof.
Finally, Noah knew that only if you were nearly eighty and your name was Uncle Nip and you were more than half tanked could you name it. She could hear Roley raking over their small stove, ensuring that there’d be a cuppa before tomorrow’s milking without having to go over to Main House. He was always so thoughtful. She propped herself up on her elbow to look out the window and right at that very moment saw way away the Cousinses’ house go dark on its own hill.
‘The death of me ol dick, darling.’ Uncle Nipper, under the weather fifteen-odd years ago, after the Dundalla Show, had walked in to stand by her pillow. Pretending to be asleep but as awake as all else she’d caught a glimpse of Nipper looking at the shrivelled-up white caterpillar of a thing that he held between his fingers. Standing with his flies undone. The moonlight splashing down.
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