by Paul Howarth
But they’re friendly enough. They pass the time and wave or touch their hats when they see him riding in. Today is no different. He smiles and does the same. He walks Lady in the direction of the general store, but then notices that the baker’s wife is serving and dismounts outside the bakery instead. He tethers Lady to the rail, takes off his hat as he walks in through the door.
“Well now, Bobby, isn’t this a nice surprise.”
She is around his own age, blond-haired, green-eyed, sharply featured, and attractive despite a billowing apron and a day’s work in her face. She smiles wearily and fidgets as he approaches the counter, touching her clothing, her hair. They often do this, the women in town. He is thirty-three years old and unmarried, and they don’t get many newcomers here.
“Hello, Emily, you keeping well?”
“Oh, you know. Too hot with the oven. You alright up there, are you?”
“Aye, we’re fine. Running short, though. Couple of loaves if you would.”
She looks around the shop with a pained grimace. The shelves behind her are bare. A few meat pies and pastries in the cabinet but that’s all.
“It’s the end of the day, Bobby. Bread’s all gone. If I knew when you were coming, I’d have kept some back. You only have to ask.”
“Don’t worry. Just two of them pies, maybe. Still warm, are they?”
She shakes her head pityingly, then laughs. “Not your day, I don’t think.”
He laughs too. “Ah, give ’em here. Be lovely if you’ve made them anyway.”
Her cheeks flush a little deeper. She wraps and bags the pies. He watches her fondly, this woman he barely knows, enjoys the two of them flirting like this, the effect it has on her, on him. He is aware that women talk about him, that they watch him through the windows as he walks down the street, and are all the more curious for how little he reveals.
“It’s just not healthy, a man living all alone like that.”
“He’s got that native up there with him. A woman now, I heard.”
“Well, that would explain it. Man like that should be married to a nice white girl, not chasing after some black.”
“And children. Should be a father by his age.”
“Exactly. To look at him you’d think there’d be a litter running around!”
In fact, there had been a woman, once. He had met her in Melbourne, on one of his visits—he has business there a couple of times a year. A waitress by the name of Anne; she had served him his tea. Fair-skinned, red-haired, freckles on her arms and cheeks. They had briefly spoken, then he found himself returning to the tearooms the following day, knowing it was a mistake but allowing himself to make it all the same. He had allowed himself so little. He thought maybe she was worth the risk.
Six months later Anne came out to live with him. He’d intended marriage, but she was back in Melbourne within eight weeks. The isolation unnerved her; he wouldn’t let her change things, wouldn’t change himself. The stolen nights they’d shared in the city, their carefree conversations, were replaced with anxiety and questions about his family, his childhood, his past.
“Whatever happened I’ll still love you,” she once told him, her damp eyes pleading, her palm against his cheek.
“No you won’t,” he said, brushing her away and heading back out to the fields.
The force of his dreams had been a shock to her: they had never come for him in Melbourne, in her lodgings or his hotel room. She saw the very worst of him, the screaming and the sweating and the horror in his face, and knew there was something rotten within. He could see it frightened her: how could they be married when she was scared of her man?
In many ways he was relieved. They traveled cordially back to the city, side by side in the dray. She had hardly met anyone in town—hadn’t wanted to introduce herself until they were properly wed—so there was no need for explanations to be made. Another small blessing. He doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy, not in that way at least. He has become reconciled to it now, considers it a fair price to pay; more than fair, in fact.
But then . . . the way the baker’s wife looks at him, the way she twists her hair.
After the bakery he visits the general store, then packs his provisions into the saddlebags and crosses the road to the pub. A single-story shack, two rooms out back, too small to call itself a hotel. The place is known as Mickey’s, after the Irishman behind the bar. His name is Jack but no one uses it: Mick, or Mickey, he is called.
He lays his hand on the door and hesitates. He knows what will be waiting for him inside. But then he also knows how towns like this work—if he doesn’t show his face, he’ll find himself excluded for good. There might come a time when he needs these people. The goodwill from the fires will only last so long. Were it not for that, he would probably be a pariah by now. It’s a delicate line he treads.
There are a handful of drinkers. They turn to watch him come in. A pause, then his name ripples gruffly around the smoke-filled room, the greeting passing like an echo between the men: “Bobby . . . Bobby . . . Bobby.”
He nods and says their names in reply, walking between the tables to the bar, where he acknowledges the few men huddled there before sitting down on a stool. Mick brings him a pot of beer—save a few dusty liquors, beer is all they have. The glass drips with condensation. He touches the foam to his lips and drinks.
“Had Old Alf in here earlier. Off the coach there, you know?”
He nods wearily. Mick standing over him, watching him drink.
“Said he called by your place. Said you might be coming down.”
“Well, here I am.”
“Aye,” Mick says. He is a tall man, white hair, face like wind-beaten stone. He glances around and leans in close. “Said you got all touchy and ran off up the house. Something about boongs and chinks, he said.”
He takes a long drink and swallows. “I needed a piss, Mick, if it’s all the same to you.”
“That’s not how Alf tells it.”
“Alf can tell it however he likes.”
He sees off the beer and sets the glass on the mat. “Another?” Mick asks him.
“Aye, alright.”
While he’s waiting he glances along the bar and behind him at the room. Men sit in small groups, some alone, one facedown on the table, asleep. He knows most of them; they all know him. Think they do anyway. He has told them the story about his wounded hand, how he was holding a fence post on a station out east when the mallet came down too soon. He doesn’t give the name of the station, or any of the others he’s worked. Tells them he’s originally from Sydney, since most people are, and nobody questions him now. They all have their stories anyway: none of them moved here clean.
Mick brings the beer, places it before him, stands back, and folds his arms.
“You know, Bobby, people don’t like hearing things like that from Alf. Makes them nervous. Reminds them what you’ve got living with you up there. On your own you’re a good bloke, you know we all think it. Welcome in here anytime. But this thing you’ve got for the natives . . . it’s not right, Bobby; it’s just not right.”
He sips contemplatively at his beer. The others along the bar are listening.
“I don’t have a thing for the natives.”
“All the same, you let them stop on your land.”
“Land’s half his. I ain’t letting nothing.”
“Which is even bloody worse! Listen, there’s people in this town got long memories as far as the blacks is concerned. They just don’t want them around. You allow one in and there’ll be dozens in no time—isn’t there a woman now, I heard?”
He is staring dead ahead as he drinks. “I wouldn’t know about that, Mick.”
“Well, all I can do is warn you. And anyway, what’s this Alf says about you reading Queenslanders? Wasn’t you from Sydney, you said?”
“Cattle prices,” he says flatly. He takes a sip, then throws back the rest of the beer and lowers the glass to the mat. “Surprised Alf never m
entioned that too.”
“I don’t think he meant nothing, Bobby.”
“Plenty to say all the same.”
“Ah, he was only passing the time.”
He stands and reaches into his pocket, picks out the change, lays it on the bar. The barman is watching him worriedly. “Stay and have another,” he says.
“Best be getting back, Mick. Maybe next time.”
The barman sniffs and looks away. “Aye, suit yourself. See you again.”
“See you again.”
As he walks to the door he returns their mumbled good-byes, pushes out into the sunshine, and for a moment stands there squinting and waiting for his eyes to settle, his body tense, his jaw set. Slowly he unclenches. Shakes himself down, replaces his hat. He crosses the street to his horse and catches the baker’s wife watching him through the window glass. She busies herself behind the counter, then pretends to notice him only now. They exchange a smile and a wave before he climbs into his saddle and clicks Lady on, the pies Emily has made for him bouncing lightly in his bag. He doesn’t look behind to see if she’s still watching, but a part of him hopes that she is.
40
He sits at the table, reading while he eats. He has fried some potatoes in the skillet and warmed the pie in the stove. He imagines Emily making it, kneading the pastry with her hands, then scolds himself for doing so; imagines the baker instead: his big hairy fingers, his chin like a toad’s. The thought never sticks. She filters back in like sunlight through leaves. What if she was with him now, at this table? What if she had kneaded, filled, and cooked the pie right here in this room? What if he took her off the baker and to hell with everyone else?
He concentrates on the journals. Flicking the pages with his left hand, forking the pie into his mouth with his right, just enough light from the lantern to see. He’s been reading The Queenslander for many years now, after coming across a copy in the barbershop in town. No one knew how it had got there; he’d leafed through the first few pages, then Willis had said if he wanted to, he could take the journal home.
“You’re the only one that’s ever looked twice at it, Bobby,” he’d said, laughing. “And the bloody thing’s been in here over a year!”
So he’d taken it home and read it, and there in black and white he had seen his brother’s name. A small entry in the announcements: a child, a girl, their fourth, Suzanna she was called. He’d shaken worse than from any fever, then he’d cried like no man should. He was an uncle. Four times over. Billy was married, a father: “grazier,” the notice said. He reckoned the dates: by the time he’d read the announcement the child was eighteen months old. He hadn’t slept at all that night, stayed out on the verandah drinking, imagining his brother’s life. Three other children, a home, a wife. He pictured them at Glendale, but there was nothing to say he was still there. Might have taken another selection in the district, might even have taken Broken Ridge. Either way, Billy had moved on, made something of himself. Just like he always said he would.
Since then the Queenslanders have become a ritual: a newsagent in Melbourne orders them for him and they arrive in sporadic batches throughout the year. At first it was torture. Like a man searching for his own death notice, he would pick through the pages, anxious for news, for any name he recognized, any mention of Billy or even himself. There was rarely anything. The state was too big, the journal’s coverage too wide. Once there was a piece about the closure of the Lawton saleyards, which was no surprise, but just reading the name brought plenty back. Bewley came up occasionally, and there was regular reader correspondence with titles such as “The Problem with the Blacks.” Nothing more about Billy. Nothing about his family or Glendale. And then one day he turned the page onto a story about Noone.
They had made him police commissioner, the article said, for the entire state force. A talented and gifted naval officer, former chief inspector of the Native Police, where his pioneering work opened swaths of the interior for pastoral use, the man responsible for solving the murder of prominent squatter John Sullivan by the outlaw Raymond Locke, renowned administrator, politician, respected botanist and anthropologist, patron of the arts . . . on and on it went. And now he had command over the entire territory, all of Queensland was his.
He’d cut out the article and kept it. A reminder: never go back.
He eats the pie slowly, turns the pages one by one. Despite his wobble earlier, he’s much better with the journals these days. Can even get some pleasure from reading about home—not his home, specifically, but the land that’s in his bones. He’ll see drawings or paintings of that vast and endless scrub, the red soil and the spinifex, and he’ll imagine himself standing there, the heat, the silence, the smell. It all comes back to him. He doubts it will ever fade. But he doesn’t like to linger there, can’t stay in his memories too long. They only ever lead in one direction. So he’ll turn the page quickly, and move on.
Nothing in this latest batch of journals catches his eye. He is onto the third volume by the time the meal is done and he decides to leave the remaining three for later. He scrapes the last of the pastry with his fork, then dabs up the crumbs with his thumb, sucks them off the end, could lick the plate just about. Bless you, sweetheart, he thinks to himself, then shakes his head and sighs. What’s wrong with him today?
While he smokes he finishes the third Queenslander, then sets the journal aside. He sits back in the chair, the wood creaks. The clock is ticking in the living room and he wonders at the time. After seven, certainly: it’s fully dark outside. Probably too late for a visit but he wants to take over the second pie. They’ll have already eaten but it’ll keep, and he feels an urge to give the thing away. Prove to himself he’s not smitten. He laughs just at the thought of it. Smitten with a pie.
Tess is waiting for him on the back porch. As if she’s read his mind. Maybe she has: the two of them are telepathic in a way he’s never been with a dog. His father would have said he’s too close to her, but what else can he do? She’s not just another work-dog, though at least he doesn’t let her into the house. Some rules you cannot shake.
“Just going over their place,” he tells her, pulling on his boots. “You can come if you want to, but you’ll be outside there the same as you are here.”
Tess follows. With the pie in his hands and his dog at his heels, he sets off walking across the rear yard with its fowl house and struggling veggie patch, through a gate, and out into the fields. A mile to get there, but the terrain is uneven and difficult in the dark. There’s no proper track. Only the flattened horse trail beaten out over the years, a constant passing back and forth between the two houses. Now it’s mainly he who does the journey. His legs are stronger, younger. Perhaps his need is greater too.
A lantern is burning on the porch. He quickens his pace down the final slope, toward a house little different from his own. They had built both places together, same materials, same design, lived in an improvised humpy to begin with, then the first house while the second was built. They had nothing but the land and the land was enough. He can still remember the feeling. His giddiness at putting down roots.
Tess announces their arrival. He comes up the steps, balances the pie in one hand, and is about to knock when a woman’s voice calls through the door, “Bobby? That you?”
“Aye, Rosie. It’s me.”
She opens up and smiles at him, notices the pie. “What’s this?”
“Brought you some supper.”
She touches his arm. “Thanks, love, but we’ve et.”
“I thought so. Bloody good, though. You don’t want it, I will.”
She laughs. Her cheeks are plump, her eyes shine. She has short braided hair and dark skin whose lines show her age. Not that he knows it. You never like to ask. In fact, he knows very little about her, doesn’t even know how she came to be here: one day she wasn’t, then the next day she was. Which was fine. He liked her instantly. There’s a fondness between them like nephew and aunt.
“He awake still?
”
A voice from inside calls: “Course I’m bloody awake!”
Rosie smiles indulgently, steps aside to let him pass. She takes the pie, then crouches to ruffle Tess on her neck and under her chin. The dog sniffs the pie and Rosie singsongs to her, “You want a piece, do you? You want a piece of this?”
He walks through, into the living room. Arthur is sitting in his chair. The old man smiles at him. “Hello, Tommy,” he says.
The sound of his name stalls him. Comes like the glimpse of a ghost. He looks over his shoulder, toward the front door, where Rosie is still playing with Tess, doesn’t seem to have heard.
Arthur waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, her hearing’s going. She’ll think I said Bobby, they sound about the same.”
Tommy sits in the other armchair, angled toward Arthur, the fire between them, though it’s not much of one. A spindle of a flame from a clutch of dead logs, but Arthur likes a fire every night. Could be the middle of summer and he’d want one lit; keep away bad spirits, signal the end of the day. Old habits: Arthur hasn’t changed much in all this time. Small things. Age leaving its mark. His knotted gray hair still hangs about his face, but the face is thin and haggard and the beard is all gray now. His body too is thin and shrunken: the best of his strength has left him, but he’s not decrepit yet. He moves just as easily as he always did, no sign of aches and pains, and he gets out in the fields with Tommy, feeding, droving, mustering the stock. It’s perhaps in the eyes that Tommy notices it most, his age, his decline: they are often laced with redness, damp and hesitant, quick to tear. Arthur is still just as full of himself but the eyes give him away. He is frightened, Tommy has concluded. He can see the end.