“You don’t say,” murmured Bony, helping himself to a sweet scone. “Two yards! That does sound bad. How did it happen?”
“Don’t know how it happened. It did happen. Of course Mister Lamb could have been upset by the Boss roarin’ and screamin’ over at the yards ’cos one of the horses is missing. Anything what upsets the peace like, upsets Mister Lamb. Then he goes off with the Missus and Tessa to the blacks’ camp, and I seen him coming back by himself and looking determined like he’d made up his mind never to leave home again. He came to the door and whined for a bit of tobacco, and I give him a shred or two and he went off to lie in the sun at yonder tree.
“Well, the next thing is there’s a hell of a thud against the outside wall. Someone yells, and then there’s a few real live curses. Mind you, I’m sitting right here where I am now, and I’m wondering what all this is about when in comes Toby. He looks like the laundry lubras has passed him through the mangle, but this can’t be as it isn’t washing day. Toby’s nose is bleeding bad, and he’s favouring his left arm and his right leg. I asks him what he wants, and he sits down and starts bleeding over the floor. And then when Mister Lamb looks in through the door I still don’t cotton that he mis-cued.”
“It would be hard to accept,” Bony gravely agreed. “Who is this Toby?”
“One of the blacks. Works now and then mustering. Now there he is bleeding like a stuck pig and me worried to death about Mister Lamb. I got a hunk of rag and give it to Toby, and I went out to see if anyone had seen what happened. Luckily no one was about, and I come in and found Toby’s nose has stopped bleeding. It was sort of serious, you see, ’cos the Boss had threatened to get rid of Mister Lamb once he done harm to anyone, and Toby looked harmed all right.
“Anyway, I took Toby out at the back and made him shove his head into a bucket of water, and that didn’t do him no extra harm. He tells me it was Mister Lamb what done it. He said he forgot about Mister Lamb as he had brought a note for me from the Missus. He’s a real wild Abo, too. So I brought him in again and gives him a pannikin of tea and a whole jam tart I had to hand. I was still trying hard to convince him it wasn’t Mister Lamb what flung him against the wall, and that he must have tripped or something, when in comes the two kids and Hilda let out it was Mister Lamb and that they had seen him mis-cue.”
“Both reliable witnesses, Jim. Of course you continued to defend Mister Lamb?”
“Well, what do you think? He’s the only humorist about the place. Anyway, the kids say they were working at their lessons in the schoolroom when it happened, and I sits them down at the table and give ’em hot jam roll I just took from the oven to sweeten ’em up. I tells them and Toby that we’d be lost without Mister Lamb around, and that we’d all better forget what happened: say nothing to no one: keep it dark, as it was the first mis-cue ever since Captain had passed him as champion.
“The kids was willing, and, after they done a bit of coaxing, Toby found his arm was all right and his leg wasn’t broke, and a quarter-pound plug of tobacco pushed under his nose, and he agreed Mister Lamb didn’t mean to ram him through the wall instead of through the doorway.”
Bony badly wanted to laugh at the manner of the telling rather than at the hurtful result of Mister Lamb’s behaviour, but gained the victory, because Scolloti was deadly serious.
“So you were able to make the incident a homestead secret,” he said, pouring himself a second pannikin of tea. “What happened to the note Toby brought from Mrs Brentner. Was that lost?”
“No. I got that all right. It was only to give Toby the Bible on the shelf in the day-room.”
“Oh!” Bony inwardly chuckled. “And the missing horse hasn’t been located, you said.”
“Something wrong somewhere,” Jim said, glancing at his clock. “Horses don’t go and clear out all by themselves. The Boss is going dead crook. Gonna have every man out today looking for it. Well, it’s me for the breakfast to start ’em.”
Bony intentionally delayed appearing for breakfast until Brentner and the men had left on the muster, and he joined Rose and the children with Tessa shortly after they sat down. Rosie wanted to know where he had gone on his walkabout.
“Almost to Beaudesert. Not quite, as I dawdled at the Crater too long. How have you two been getting along? I remembered a couple of legends and I’ll tell them after lunch.” Tessa served his breakfast and resumed her seat, which happened to be opposite his own. She was wearing a white blouse above a black pleated skirt, and her hair this morning was drawn back giving her round face a look of severity which didn’t belong. Hilda was rebelling against eating her cereal.
“I think I’ll tell one of the legends,” Bony said. “Ready? Well, there was an old lubra who had so many hungry little children she didn’t know what to do. The kangas were scarce and the men had no food to spare. So she took the children off hunting for something to eat, and they went a long long way and found nothing. After a while they came to a big baobab tree growing all alone, and they all sat down and began sucking their thumbs just for something to make them forget how hungry they were. Then the baobab tree said: ‘If you look...’”
Bony proceeded to eat, and, with her spoon hovering over her untouched plate, Hilda waited with expectant eyes for him to continue. He appeared to have forgotten about the legend. Tessa told the child to get on with her breakfast as school would be punctual this morning, and Rosie urged him to tell what the baobab said.
“What the baobab said? Oh! Eat up, Hilda. No, that wasn’t what the baobab tree said. It is what I said. No it’s not. It’s what ... There, you are making me all confused. Do get on with your breakfast, Hilda, so I can finish the legend. That’s right. Well, the baobab said: ‘If you look into my larder you’ll find a lot of nardoo seeds you can grind into flour for porridge, and there’s something else, too. There’s two legs and two shoulders of beef hanging up on a hook. So you all cut off steaks and make a fire and cook them, and I promise you will never be hungry again.’”
Hilda finished her portion of porridge, taking second place with him. Her eyes were bright, and rebellion forgotten.
“Well, the children and the old lubra looked for the baobab’s larder. They had to climb up the ugly old trunk to the big entrance at the top. Then they had to make a rope and lower one of the boys down inside to where the larder was, there being no steps or anything. Well, when the hungry little boy was lowered right down he began to cut steaks off the beef and eat them raw, and when he had stuffed himself he was too heavy to be pulled up, and too tired to cut off any more steaks to be pulled up by the rope.
“So they lowered a little girl down to the larder, and she cut off steaks and stuffed and stuffed without any thought of the others up top whose mouths were watering. Then she was so heavy they couldn’t pull her up, and another little boy was lowered. And so it went on until only the poor old lubra was left on top of the trunk. You can imagine what she felt like, eh?”
“What?” pressed Rosie and her sister echoed the question. Rose Brentner was gently smiling, and Tessa was regarding Bony with large and solemn black eyes.
“Well, there she was, as hungry as a ... as a bandicoot. So she tied the end of the rope to a branch and began to lower herself down inside the trunk. Then the rope broke and she fell to the bottom among all the little boys and girls who were so full they couldn’t move. The old lubra took up the knife and cut steaks and ate them raw, and the funny thing was that the eggs and shoulders of beef never became smaller. What a feast they had, to be sure. Eat, eat and eat, and the larder never growing empty.”
“How did they all get out in the end, Inspector?” queried Rosie, and Hilda added, “Yes, how?”
“They never did get out,” answered Bony, casting a fleeting glance at Tessa. “The rope broke high up and they couldn’t mend it and so climb out. And ever since when anyone passes under that tree the baobab says in a loud voice, ‘Climb up and see what is in my larder.’ But no one ever does, because anyone would know that baobab
trees don’t have larders.”
Hilda placed her fairy-like hand on Bony’s wrist and said, appealingly, “Thank you. Now tell us the other legend, please.”
“Not till after school,” decided her mother. “And not then if Inspector Bonaparte is busy. I’ll tell you what, though. The main lesson this morning could be writing an essay about that lovely legend. What do you think, Tessa?”
“It will be fine. We haven’t had an essay for days,” replied Tessa.
“But what shall we call the old lubra?” asked Rosie, and Bony said, “Well, she wasn’t so very old, you know. Only old to the children, that’s all. Let’s call her Irititisatassa. You could make it shorter, of course. You could call her Tessa.”
Tessa laughed with the children and, when she had taken them off for morning school, Rose Brentner fell to studying Bony while asking if he would care for another cup of coffee.
Chapter Fourteen
Keen On Legends
CHANGING POSITION to sit closer to his hostess, Bony asked, “How did the wedding go off?”
“It did not go off,” Rose replied. “It was a fiasco. Just where have you been during all the uproar?”
“Learning legends from baobab trees. Some are full of legends. What is your husband doing today?”
“They’re all going looking for the horse. It wasn’t in the paddock yesterday morning. Kurt is really angry about it. It’s not the value of the horse that stirred him, but conviction that an Aborigine took it. He’s organized the two boys and half a dozen black stockmen, including Captain, to muster. Would you know anything of it?”
“I am more interested in the wedding you say did not take place.”
“Well, with Captain and Tessa, I went to see Gup-Gup. When we arrived at the camp, Gup-Gup was asleep in his wurley. I had Captain fetch him out. I made Captain bring a box for me to sit on, and Gup-Gup, who was wearing an old army overcoat, squatted before me. There was nothing of the magnificent savage about him. Just a nasty dirty-looking old man. He mumbled something to a lubra and she brought four other nasty dirty-looking old men who squatted behind him. Thank you.”
Bony extinguished the match he had held in service, and made no comment. Rose went on, “I began by asking what had been done to Lawrence and the girl, and Gup-Gup said, in effect, that nothing had been done to them as I had told Captain they hadn’t to be harmed. Then he said, and he wasn’t insolent, ‘Missus tell Captain that Abo laws no good any longer. So nothing done to Wandin and Lawrence for breaking Abo laws.’
“I then demanded that they be brought and, by this time, there’s a dozen lubras and all the children by the look of it, and more of the men. Captain spoke in their tongue, and the men began to shout, and soon Lawrence came and then the girl. I noticed they walked all right, and then I said that, as they were to be married, they must be married right now. I thought I was smart, and I told them that, as they had broken the law, the sooner they were married proper black-feller fashion, the sooner the Abo law would be repaired. That is what you wanted me to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. What happened then?”
“It was as you anticipated. The old men began to mumble among themselves. Gup-Gup drew pictures on the ground with a stick. The women were silent, and a middle-aged Aborigine I don’t remember ever having seen then began to shout at Gup-Gup, who didn’t take any notice of him. Captain shouted something and the strange Aborigine stopped his noise. I thought.... Would he be Wandin’s husband, d’you think?”
“Quite likely,” replied Bony. “As the girl’s rightful husband, he would naturally protest at her marriage with Lawrence. What is he like to look at?”
“Oh! I’d say he was taller than the average; very powerful. He had two front teeth missing. There was an open cut down his forehead on the right side. Tessa said his name is Mitti. She told me that on the way home. The old men went on muttering; Gup-Gup went on drawing with his stick. No one seemed to get anywhere, and I was determined I’d sit there all day and wear them out.”
“You might sit for eternity and not wear them out,” Bony said.
“That’s what I began to feel about it all. And so I told them if they wouldn’t marry the lovers then I would, and I ordered a young Aborigine to come to me. It just happened I had an envelope in my pocket, and Tessa had a pencil. So I wrote a note to Jim Scolloti asking him to give Toby, the young Aborigine I’d called, a Bible for Toby to bring back at once. Then I read the note aloud and told Toby to hurry, and to Gup-Gup I said I’d marry them myself.
“This started the fellow with the gash on his forehead shouting something I couldn’t understand, and Tessa said he was protesting about the tribal laws being broken one after another. Toby was away a long time, and when he came with the Bible he looked as though he’d been in a fight. I questioned him about it, and he said he’d tripped over a root and hurt his face. And then, when I had the Bible and was going to make pretend to marry the couple, they had vanished. They weren’t there, that’s all.”
“Didn’t Tessa see which way they went? Where?” pressed Bony, his eyes gleaming with humour.
“She said not. Are you laughing because I was waiting at the church?”
“Partly. What happened to the tall Abo with the wounded face?”
“The man who protested so violently? I don’t remember. I think he vanished too.”
“And Poppa, the Medicine man?”
“I didn’t see him at all.”
“Then what did you do? After the lovers vanished?”
“I told them, through Captain, that there would be no more tobacco issue until the lovers were properly married in my presence.” Rose Brentner’s mood lifted. “I doubt I could have married them, anyway. There’s a prayer book, somewhere, but I couldn’t think where it was. Did I do all right?”
“Splendidly. You are now convinced that the lady is the wife of Mitti?” Rose said it certainly appeared to be so, and Bony drummed his fingers on the table-cloth as he reviewed the picture she had drawn for him.
“What does it all mean?” she asked, trying to penetrate the veil worn by Gup-Gup and the others. Her failure made her petulant.
“There is an axiom which, in effect, says if your opponent lies in the sun all day you can do nothing with him. When I came here I found everyone metaphorically lying in the sun. It was necessary to prod everyone into activity. Well, now everyone is active. There’s Gup-Gup wriggling on your hook. You haven’t said much about Captain, but he will be a much worried man. Mitti, the fellow with the wounded head, is dancing with jealous rage; and without doubt Poppa will be cooking up some counter to explain the vanished horse. From all the activity will emerge, I hope, the solution of the Lucifer’s Couch mystery. You mentioned that Tessa interpreted what Mitti said as a protest against Abo laws being broken. Was that on your way home?”
“Yes, it was.”
“It was then firmly in your mind that the protest was against marriage to Lawrence of the woman belonging to Mitti?”
“Yes. You see, I couldn’t understand a word, but he kept on pointing to her and then to himself. She was certainly frightened, and once he gripped her wrist and held her for several minutes.”
“And yet Tessa interpreted, afterwards, that Mitti protested against broken laws. Who would be right: Tessa or you?”
Rose closed her eyes as though they pained her, and when she looked again at him they emitted anger.
“Sometimes, Inspector Bonaparte, you are exasperating. I made my mind lock away the doubt of Tessa, and you drag it forth. I admit that I know the man was protesting against Wandin being married to Lawrence. Even Lawrence was frightened by what he said. What can we do about Tessa?”
“Why, nothing at all. She is only serving two masters without realizing it. When she does, she’ll decide for one or the other. By the way, have you ever seen a tiny ivory Buddha, worn as a charm or talisman?”
“A Buddha! How you do prod people. No, I cannot say I have.”
“I am glad to hear yo
u say that.” Bony gazed thoughtfully at his fingers rolling a cigarette, and, waiting for the next prod, Rose noted the well-groomed hair and the profile of this man who could have modelled for a magazine illustrator.
“Did you arrange with Mrs Leroy to stay with her while Kurt was at Hall’s Creek?” he asked.
“Ethel Leroy appreciated the offer but would not hear of it. Said I was to go to Hall’s and take the children, as it would be a real break for all of us. Her sister will be staying with her.”
“And you’re going?”
“I hope so. Kurt was too furious this morning to talk about it.”
“And if he agrees you will go ... when?”
“It will have to be tomorrow. Will you be coming with us?”
“I think not, but you could save me a possible trip to seek information from Mrs Leroy. I’ll remind you of the matter before you leave. It concerns legends.”
“Legends! You seem particularly keen on legends. Are you writing a book about them?”
“I might when I have completed this assignment.” He laughed at himself. “The subject is of profound interest to wandering anthropologists, and all the local legends should be preserved before the Gup-Gups pass on. To return to the trip. You would like to go?”
“Oh yes. It is a break, you know. Besides there will be a lot of other women there to gossip with; and children, too. Often I feel we are unduly isolated.”
“Then I shall insist on your husband taking you. In return, will you support me when the time comes?”
Rose Brentner laughed openly, saying she could not believe he needed supporting at any time, but would do so. Then she said she had chores to do, and he left her and wandered across to the kitchen.
“I been thinking about you,” the cook said, his dark and piercing eyes distinctly troubled. “You didn’t say anything about Mister Lamb mis-cueing, did you?”
“Of course not,” Bony assured him. “I like Mister Lamb, and owe him no grudge. In fact, I’ve just given him the best cigarette I’ve made for a month. Have you found out why he mis-cued?”
The Will of the Tribe Page 10