Clement watches a girl in a strange country
Early on Saturday morning Clement goes with his mother on the bus into the main streets of Bassett. When his mother has finished her shopping she tells Clement he can choose a small book from the shelves in Gunns’ Newsagency for his sixth birthday because he seems to like books. Clement chooses a book called Little Jacky Hare. When they arrive home he puts the book on his dressing-table beside his other books, My First Book of English Birds, which he chose on his fifth birthday, and Little Brother Jesus, which was sent to him by his aunt who is a nun. Far away from the parched trees of Bassett a girl sits in a walled garden. Through the gateway in the old mossy wall she can see a river that has flowed past Great Yarmouth and Golders Green and Tunbridge Wells and many other wooded inland towns miles away from McCracken’s Road where a boy who wants to see some birds has to walk for hours on Sunday afternoon along gravel footpaths past straw-coloured lawns towards the ill-defined edges of an inland city before he glimpses among dusty branches the obscure grey-green plumage of one of the birds that is illustrated in the few smudged colour-plates of his father’s copy of Leach’s Australian Bird Book. After Clement has closed the book he sees the girl walking down between reed-buntings and water-wagtails towards the low grassy cliffs where the lawn meets the stream. While she is taking off her dress to bathe Little Jacky Hare scampers into the grass near by. He is fleeing from hunters and dogs who have separated him from his mother and sister and driven him out of the green tussocks where he has lived all his life on a hillside within sight of the girl’s home. The girl sees him trying to hide near the river bank but does not disturb him and goes on undressing. She bathes knee-deep in the placid dark-blue water, listening to the sounds of willow-warblers and nuthatches in the trees and fields all around. With one quick glance she fixes in her mind an expanse of green more broad and luminous than any corner of lawn or garden that a boy in a tawny city thousands of miles away might assemble from the precious streaks and tints in the pages of books that he chooses each year for his birthday. When she has dried herself she sits on the pleasant lawn not far from Jacky’s hiding-place and begins to dress, pausing often to watch a pair of stonechats flitting above her. She arranges her clothes prettily as if she knows that one day a few people in countries that she has never even read about will stare at pictures of her and the place where she once lived and wonder what it was like to be a girl in that green garden where so few people ever came that birds and animals frisked without fear all around her and where the colour of a single leaf or the sheen on a single feather was brighter and more lasting than great sheets of sunlight on their own plains. She hears the sounds of the hunters moving further away and beckons Jacky Hare to come out into the open. Clement asks his father whether there are any hares in Australia. Augustine tells him about the huge hares that used to lie all day in tall clumps of grass on the farm where Augustine was born. The hares had no burrows to hide in and their young ones had no other way to protect themselves than by crouching low in the thick grass as the men and dogs approached. A boy flees from his home in an inland town and tries to live like a hare in the sparse grass on the hard dry hills. Each day he watches the chestnut-tailed heath-wrens and lilac-wattled honeyeaters and thinks of names that everyone might call them by, but the birds are already moving farther back away from the towns and farms and some kinds are disappearing altogether from the land so that no one will ever know them by name. Boys in the towns of Australia who look in books for stories about the Hareboy and his blossoming shrubs and flitting birds see instead a pale smiling girl beside a far-off river. After living for a few years among unsatisfying rocks and dull-coloured leaves and elusive birds and knowing that few people will ever read about him or see his picture in a book, the Hareboy comes back to his friends and does not even bother to argue with them when they say that the yellow-breasted shrike-robin is not a real bird, or that the common beard-heath is not a real flower.
Clement loves Barbara Keenan
Clement Killeaton sees again a trellis heavy with green creepers that hides the back garden of a house at the better end of Leslie Street and thinks once more of Barbara Keenan, the girl he has loved for more than a year. One Saturday he walks for half an hour through strange streets past the northern railway line and the deep drain that everybody calls the creek. He stares for a minute at the view along Barbara’s street but turns back so that he does not see at last through the side gate of a weatherboard house, a little neater than his own, a backyard where on Saturday after Saturday a girl is content to go on playing the same few trivial games while only a mile away on the other side of the creek a boy draws in the dirt of his backyard maps of squares in which one square is shaded with tufts of grass and enhanced by a few low hills that he has scraped up with his hands from the otherwise level dirt. For a long time, as he wriggles on his belly along the bare ground from the farthest corner of his yard, the boy cannot even see the town where one square of streets is distinguished so clearly from those around it. The dwindling voices of American women have almost ended their song – in the hills of Idaho in the hills of Idaho, before he glimpses the low hills blurred with foliage above a vista of grove-like streets. He approaches the end of a long journey across a country that he may never see towards hills that he can only guess at where he might have seen some clearer sign of whatever it was that he wanted to love when he saw and could not afterwards forget such things as the peculiar arrangement of three pale-golden freckles on the unsmiling face of a small girl who never spoke to him and who played her most private games behind leaves that he had never parted. After years of travelling he has almost reached the end of a journey that he first began when he heard on the wireless the songs Red Sails in the Sunset, When It’s Springtime in the Rockies, or In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia that are much older than the songs on the new hit parade programs that everyone in Bassett is now listening to or when he saw coloured pages of old National Geographic magazines with captions like Oregon-bound wagons once caused traffic tie-ups in this lonely pass, or Grass-grown ruts still show where plucky pioneers once passed, and knew that somewhere, so far away that no gaping child or adult who might peer into the corners of a backyard in Bassett may even begin to search for it, is a country deep inside what people who live near its borders call the country. Only the imponderable expanse of its treeless grasses is huge enough to encompass the months-long trek towards a hint of foothills, which is what he sees before him whenever he vows to go on loving Barbara Keenan. Almost every day at school he catches sight of the clean pink skin above her knees that are marred by no scabs or sores from falling on gravel footpaths and schoolgrounds, yet still he refuses to wonder about her thighs and pants and sets his eyes instead on a line of violet just above the farthest horizon. A man knows that there, at the very end of an almost-empty landscape, his little sweetheart of the mountains is safely hidden from other men and boys until the day, almost at the beginning of summer and just as she is about to give up hope, when he arrives back and surprises her dressed in modern American bathers and standing in a clear mountain stream. On the afternoon of the first Friday of the month the children of St Boniface’s school march in threes to the church for Benediction. They swing their hundreds of pairs of feet under the seats and finger the varnish, sticky from the heat, on the railings of the seats in front of them, while the massed gold spikes of the monstrance and the extravagant creamy folds of the cope and humeral veil do honour to the tiny stark white disc of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Clement sees, a few seats ahead of him, Barbara’s white socks turned down neatly over her ankles and, when she stands up for the last hymn, Hail Queen of Heaven, part of the gradual curves of her calves. He reminds Our Lord present on the altar that he has never tried to see beneath her skirt and asks Him to protect her always from boys or men who may want to do impure things to her. In answer to his prayer he is allowed to see how the man who goes home to the Rockies sometimes makes out through gaps in forested cliffs
and beyond tenuous valleys the true country of Idaho where it trembles, faint and unapproachable, in the last sounds of a song.
Bassett enjoys American films
Perhaps no one now remembers the song of Idaho in all the streets of Bassett where every Saturday afternoon hundreds of children from Catholic and State schools walk towards the Tasma or the Liberty or the Miami to watch Tim Holt or Gene Autry riding back through miles of unfenced grasslands to claim the ranch that was always his by right although few people would believe him. A girl with flawless white skin waits to welcome him in front of the homestead that is miles from any road. The trees and flowers and birds are still newly discovered and too strange for the people to know by name but when the children of Bassett have gone back to their homes the men and women will spend their spare time learning the differences between each kind and giving them original names like searcher’s home, American skin and lonely Angeline. Clement studies his atlas to learn the names of the places where those people live. His father discovers what he is doing and tells him that some of the first Killeatons in Australia were pioneers who rode out looking for land in places where there were no crowds to cheer them on. They rode on, not needing people to watch who could not even tell which of the two places, the one that the pioneers were riding towards and the one that the watchers could turn around and go home to, was the real country and which was only a place that people watched others riding towards.
The Glasscocks, the Barretts and the Moys
Clement tells a racing story to the Glasscock boys from next door. They ask their father to have a race with them but he misunderstands them and only chases them round the house with a broomstick held between his legs for a horse. Clement watches them through the fence because Augustine has forbidden him to go into the Glasscocks’ place. Clement’s mother laughs at Mr Glasscock from behind the curtains in the side window. She says – it’ll be a different tune when Lloyd Glasscock comes home on Friday night the worse for wear from the Clare Castle. On Friday night Augustine is late home because of the phone calls that he has to make to Melbourne. Clement’s mother locks herself and her son in their house and then peeps through the curtains at the Glasscocks’ house. Mr Glasscock arrives home at dusk. Minutes later he drives all his children out into the backyard. When some of them creep back onto the back veranda he chases them with a broom. While Mrs Glasscock prepares his tea the Killeatons hear him in the front bedroom tearing up a floorboard. For a long time after Augustine has arrived home the Killeatons hear Mr Glasscock banging his board against walls and doors. Augustine says – it’s none of our business and anyway Lloyd never hurts anyone and the eldest boy always stands up for his mother and nails down the boards on Saturday while Lloyd is away. After Clement has said his prayers and climbed into bed Augustine comes in and reminds him how lucky he is not to have a father like some of the men in Leslie Street. Augustine talks about Cyril Barrett who never drinks or smokes but goes off on gambling sprees and leaves his family alone for days with no money in the house, and Mr Wallace the thin-faced grocer who makes his sons help him for hours in the shop after school and makes his wife unhappy in other ways. Clement asks whether Harold Moy the jockey is a good husband. Augustine hesitates then says – yes I suppose he is in his own way. Harold Moy is half-Chinese. His wife has lustrous olive skin but her eyes have an Australian shape. She stares through sunglasses across glaring racecourses while her husband urges on his mount to please her. While she watches her husband, Clement sees, in either of the bright tunnels where her eyes should be, a diminutive man in a jacket of rich colours. Behind the man’s half-smiling wrinkled face a blank plain stretches back from streets of tiny wooden cottages in Bassett’s Chinatown, built by people who found their way by sea and land to a country whose name they could not even pronounce and stayed for so long among people whose language they did not know that no one remembered them in the land they had left, where the blinds are always drawn but whose rooms contain only bare walls and unwavering lights, towards not a sky but a smooth sloping golden rim beyond which the God of the Catholics and all His angels and saints never pass on any of their journeys around the edges of their misty lawns and forests. Harold has no children because he is selfish and wants to discover with only his wife beside him the streets and rooms in another city that a few of his people may have reached in their travels hidden in the harsh light from that golden wall that seems to Clement so cheerless and unpromising.
Augustine backs Skipton in the Melbourne Cup
Clement’s mother locks all the doors and windows whenever her husband is away from Bassett. A warm wind rattles the windows, and the drawn blinds sway faintly during the afternoon of Melbourne Cup Day, 1941. Clement’s mother cannot explain what she is trying to keep out of the house. She tells Clement to play quietly among the coloured lines and patterns on the rug in the lounge-room. Towards three o’clock a huge yellowish shape bumps against the house and waits to be let in, but the boy has learned how to sit quietly and pretend that no one is at home. When the place is quiet again Clement’s mother tells him that his father has had a lot of money on a horse in the Melbourne Cup. It is the most important race since Clement’s mother and father were first married. Clement is too young to understand a race broadcast. His mother stands up with her face pressed against the wireless. She whispers that Skipton is last but there is still a long way to go. Clement asks her what Skipton means and she says – it’s the name of a town a long way away somewhere on the way to your grandfather Killeaton’s farm. A little later she tells him that Skipton is going to win after all. She listens a little longer then turns off the wireless. She kneels down and makes Clement kneel beside her to pray. He repeats each few words after her to thank God for letting Augustine win enough to pay all his debts and take them on a proper holiday to Kurringbar so that Clement can see his uncles and aunties and grandparents at last. His mother prays silently while Clement listens to the wind in the hedges along the side streets of Skipton. He tiptoes to the window and peeps around the blind. Big slow plains are creeping sadly away from the house. A haze of dust from the north makes a sign in the sky and tries to reach Bassett, but the blinds are pulled down all over the city and no one sees the silent empty places where they may all be going. But the northern sky comes home in the end and even the Killeatons’ walls and windows might not stop its long searching run. Clement’s mother takes him to Wallaces’ shop to buy a family brick of ice-cream and three bottles of creamy soda. On the way they hear the roaring of the men in the bar of the Clare Castle. She tells the boy how lucky he is that his father doesn’t come home drunk and chase him like Mr Glasscock. Late at night Clement wakes up as Augustine comes home. The boy hears his parents counting out hundreds of pounds on their bed. Augustine tells his wife that their holiday might have to wait a little longer. He didn’t want to worry her but his debts were more than he told her, but now Skipton has just about cleaned them all up.
Clement first hears of the Foxy Glen
Augustine takes Clement up the hill to Stan Riordan’s big house. Augustine talks to Stan Riordan on the back lawn near the fishpond. He pays back ten pounds of the money he owes him and asks Stan to write a short note that he can show to the other big starting-price bookmakers in Bassett if he should want to get some big money on for his Melbourne friends in the next few weeks. Stan warns him kindly not to get in too deep but agrees to write the note to say that Augustine’s credit is good. Augustine says that his mates in Melbourne never miss with their really big bets and there could be one coming up. Clement goes off quietly to look for Therese. He finds her with her friend again. The two girls are unpacking things from a box decorated with transfers of flowers. They try to stop Clement from looking too closely at the things. He sees a small tin that is kept locked and asks what is in it. Therese says nothing but the other girl says – all these things are Therese’s treasures and that’s her Foxy Glen. On the lid of the tin is a faded picture of an animal. Clement tells them it looks more like a din
go than a fox but they ignore him. The girls take some of the treasures to the front garden and Clement follows them. As they climb astride the lowest branch of a willow tree he sees several inches of Therese’s white pants and sees that she sees him staring at them. The girls talk in whispers as they pass things between them. Clement slowly moves closer to their branch. He asks Therese does she have any young brothers, although he knows she has none. He asks her does she know what a boy looks like without his pants on. Therese tells him not to be so rude or she’ll slap his face and tell his father. The other girl says – Therese knows all about that stuff – she even keeps pictures of things like that in her Foxy Glen. The girls whisper together. Therese still does not smile. Clement tries to learn more, but Mrs Riordan calls the girls and they run inside, taking their treasures with them. Clement goes looking for the Foxy Glen but it is not where he first saw it. While he is wandering around the garden the other girl comes up quietly behind him. She is alone. She asks him where he lives. When he tells her in Leslie Street she tells him that her boyfriend used to live there. Clement asks her was his name Silverstone, and she says that it could have been. Then she tells him that her boyfriend knew everything about girls and the things that men and women do in their bedrooms or in the long grass beside the creek on Sundays. Clement asks what those things are, but she tells him she cannot explain if he does not know already. He asks whether Therese Riordan knows, but the girl tells him to look in the Foxy Glen if he wants to find out. She tells him she would like to have a young brother to talk to sometimes, and offers to tell him about some hair that some people have between their legs. Clement asks her to persuade Therese to join in their talks, but the girl thinks Therese might be too shy. Clement asks her again about the Foxy Glen. She agrees to tell him more if he comes to Riordans’ next Sunday. He explains that his father only comes when he has lost at the races. His father calls for him to go home. As he leaves, the girl reminds him that they might have some fun in the fernery together one Sunday. He asks her again to get Therese interested. When he reaches home he clears a space in a paddock of a remote stud farm and writes in the dust the names of all the clean and pretty girls whose pants he has seen. In an unfenced place on the edge of the desert country he starts a list of girls who may soon agree to take down their pants for him. He puts Therese Riordan first on this list and Margaret Wallace second. He does not write Therese’s friend on this list because her face is ugly when she grins. Then he takes a marshmallow weed and sweeps it across the plains where the names are written until the ground is as bare as it seemed to be when the Silverstones had gone away and the Killeatons came to live there and little Clement was still too small to go digging and scraping in the backyard for signs that another boy might have left behind.
Tamarisk Row Page 5