Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  Uncle skidded. His mind had wandered. He wasn’t watching where he was going. Like a beginner on skis his helpless sticks projected at odd angles as his feet went from under him and he fell. The land caught him in the back with a tremendous thump. He lay there winded and shocked. Of course he had fallen once like this when he was a boy, that fabulous year it snowed at London and the mountain vanished altogether into the white sky and ice lay thick on the ground. Himself and his mates skidding again and again along one slippery strip, creating a slide, running at it like bowlers to a cricket pitch. Then thump and he was down and couldn’t get up for a minute, so the others laughed and then got scared. And here was this same little boy flat in the mud with warm rain soaking the front of his shirt. Next thing Annie Lang and young Bill were one each side of him like a pair of wonky crutches making headway towards the house. One of those pinetrees shaking down huge drops in the wind, I planted them pines, Uncle tried to say to establish some respect for himself. Mouth working at it. Sound not wanting to come. Now it was Uncle’s turn to be installed in Vivien’s bed, propped there like a huge rag doll no one would ever want. But first up ten steps and then along the passage. Heave ho. Careful.

  They gasped and puffed in your ear, you could swear the two of them was bellows and a weak fire trying to blaze: o your fat arse they don’t know what good times you had rorting and fishing and travelling through the weather here help that leg a bit up the stair no o lord love us there were you laughed till the tears ran and when the trucks came in you got yourself that Dodge and ran it and ran it what about picking up the ladies at Yalgoona and halfway up the mountain the damn thing boiled squirting steam leaving rusty powder all over the motor clicking hot enough to fry eggs keep it turning over love while I add a drop at a time and seeing the fanbelt caused it broken now then ladies you said like announcing an interval for icecream which of you darlings is going to be the lucky one to save us with her stockings a pair of silk stockings and you could fix this good enough to get us home at least and young Bunty Buddall giggling fit to give herself hiccups saying you did it on purpose to see my legs Uncle coming good with the stockings modest she went down behind a bit of scrub to pull them off but you catching a glimpse of suspenders dangling though you tried not to being a gent at heart darling legs as they were and her lifting her foot turning it inwards pretty as you like to roll one stocking over her ankle ah Bunty you’re the heroine and you’ll be awarded Queen Mary’s Medal for female bravery if we have any say with Queen Mary take my word there goes the last stair on the flat at last wait wait for breath bloody fall like you fell as a kid on ice but never saw ice like that again thank you Annie kindly but a man’s lost without his pipe you like a big rush of smoke the sweet flavoured stuff flake of course only ponces smoke mixtures where you can’t taste what’s in it and anyway half of it scent by the way it sticks round your dentures afterwards bad as cold fat no you give her a little pat on the shoulder helpless fingers she’s helping you stand all said and done thank you lovey ah those Virginia swindlers run-down colonies new blood dangerous mix as we know here your worship mate money the root of it no doubt about that yes ta it does ease the back the spine to lie down again you know what you mean to say if you could find the words ta for the kindness gentle hands young Billy a decent feller though what his father means by murdering good timber you don’t and couldn’t make sense not to mention if eagles have feelings eagles without a home after all these years sticking it out once their forest was gone loyalty that couldn’t be anything else o yes animals do have and birds as well well-known o lordy a beautiful rest darling but somebody ought to pick that leg of yours up off of the floor yes the foot down there somewhere you can’t see lying back comfortable where you are yes that’s the one too right you’re alright now pig in shit they’re leaving you so she can make a cup of tea and he can talk to her in private well fair enough you say no snooping old man with jealousies glad of the time because something deep is a problem you have to fish for and bring up room looks bigger from a lying down position the tongue and groove ceiling got a bit of a sag to it must be the weather seeping through though no sign even with this rain and rain pounding so you’re back son what’re you doing Billy why should they come off no man’s going to take your clothes off wet or not nor no woman neither come to that so don’t anyone get ideas you’ll be right it’ll soon work off as steam and you can brush the dried mud sorry about the blankets though looking forward to a minute’s peace to get things straight but your mother was just like that about wet clothes in the house dry between the toes chills and so forth superstition water never hurt anybody goodbye and thank you must clear the old brain get all this muck out no good something deep there must think good times with picnic races and the Massey Cycle Club when cycles the rage though you didn’t have so far to go at Whitey’s or else too far of course on a bike city man’s invention really the bicycle but the sport another matter and decorated cycles for the girls in hats and flounces wearing white and their sweet soft pink cheeks and white fingers you’d want to slip your own among ah the treacherous past is treachery whatever felt better than this bed you may well ask can’t hear a thing problem with deafness big enough earholes god knows who made them but gone brum crook state of affairs when you can’t move get up and see when you hope like hell those kids have made things up but of course they have no need to worry and is that you Bertha old girl nice wet nose have you been asleep you lazy hound no that’s enough licking what’s got into you have you forgotten how to behave but got something else to fish for down there somewhere hidden need a piss rather urgent but can’t move much wait nursey nursey take my hand but look the other way you were steward at the picnic races back in the conscription days a battle that was with the authorities coming up the mountain road and nobody else to lead public opinion ladies dear ladies announcement the government agents are coming to take your men or put us in jail so look after the race meeting my dears while the boys and me get hold of shotguns and meet outside the pub in a trice the races turned into the first all female handicap events in the history of New South Wales with Grandma Collins at eighty as official starter the skirts were off and the jodhpurs on before the government came creeping round the last bend choking in a cloud of mountain dust those were sporting days no question and then they set about taking out their nasty feelings by parading through the town all military show with brass and straight lines and stiff arms and up ridiculous towards the mountain paraded piff puffing but grim when the whole forest opened fire above their heads amazement the officers with their braid and ribbons running like a lot of madhouse christmas trees clink clank and their lovely boots looking like yellow velvet and shouting orders come out of there you cowards but they never saw a one of you and nobody got hurt so they retired to the racecourse in time to watch Bertha your wife-to-be come romping home on the skewbald gelding in the eight furlongs and stayed for the sight of Olive McTaggart bareback so mustn’t have been so bad as expected human at least and even cast a bet here and there according to legend but next time they sent their requests by post demanding obedience and stupid Kel McAloon gave in and volunteered but not the rest they never heard you still existed even ten years after armistice there wasn’t a man jack had filled in a government form for fear of letting down the side and afterwards you and your rorting mates diggers indeed coming yahooing whoopeeing down off the slopes as the dust settled behind the official cavalcade and the ladies refusing to give up their prize money for the races they rode and you had to grant them they carried the day with style ah the lovely creatures flushed and panting from the vigorous events plus the triumph of doing it and the whiff of sweat nothing more delicious to the nose and eyes old eyeballs all looking perving and brain click clack imagining while papa Walter Schramm came dancing down the street purple with rage shouting that some maniac had shot his chimneypots to pieces with about forty cartridges o boy you’ve got to ease this bladder somehow why not sit and swing your legs over first or call out understandable af
ter all natural there you are Billy Billy you see it’s like this I wonder Billy yes thanks didn’t like to trouble or anything sorry it’s natural and old timers have the frequent need as a rule you never knew Olive McTaggart son did you married Frank McAloon back in the twenties nor Gil her brother the most giant man could bend solid iron with his hands never seen a sight like it but jumped over Whitey’s Waterfall because he couldn’t understand anything especially not Jessie McAloon on her second time round with marriage who had her third time with his brother Paddy afterwards and Jessie said Gil had the biggest cock in the Empire and offered to have him show it at the harvest festival for a donation to the Indian Missionary Society though others said it was just for the chance for her to skite he didn’t understand and a waste when you think of it a giant like that and such a famous two-pound cock thrown away on the world for want of an ounce of brain while the other ladies of town had a celebration of tea and easter cake thanksgiving for being let out of their sins of coveting and temptations of the flesh beyond what’s respectable and him having given her three children by the time he was sixteen and you wouldn’t have known D’Arcy Collins another suicide a bit too handy with his rifle was determined to prove he could hit the mark even if it was pointblank bit of a juggler too used to go in for fire-eating also a sword-swallowing act on the side done for the school concert every year ended up swallowing the muzzle of his rifle and practising clever things with his toes doesn’t do to be too clever he was the one left a note on the kitchen table just before dawn milking if you want me I’ll be down with the cows and so he was a half his head in the gutter of piss ah that feels so good yes finished now you can help us back if you will room turning touch giddy why the blasted hell this rain and going out like that more haste less speed Grannie said right she was too oh ahh better no need to stay fine just fine be up soon and right as rain don’t suppose you ever heard tell of the Wit’s End murder did you no well that was before your time too and never solved though everybody knew who did it baby dead of suffocation and nobody able to suspect the only suspect cute little girl of four she was and did it females not the same as us more jealous possessive feel more there’s a fire in them we haven’t got ah but the murderer grew up to be somebody’s mum and somebody else’s grandma and ate apples and drank milk like anyone else so aside from a touch of extra respect she survived got along like any other girl we all knew and knew she’d never forgive herself and not forget so why remind her can you still hear or can’t a deaf man catch your answers no just as well blabber-mouth full of the useless past give us your paw Bertha old girl old faithful o lord love us yes ahh that’s

  The rain had stopped. Silence. Arthur George Ortrid (Uncle) Swan lay sunken in the bed where he’d once made love to Annie Lang. It was the same bed standing in the same position. He and only he had changed. He was smaller than he’d ever been, lighter and less noticeable, you could see through his skin. Annie had gone, he had changed. The rain stopped. He lay silently helplessly sunk in comfort, thinking of the shortness of life, the trickery of ninety-one years. The wardrobe, painted green and heaped with cardboard boxes, filled one corner; there was a rose on its righthand door which Annie had painted there and promised to paint a matching one in white on the left door, but only ever managed the red one. The faint powerhouse of deafness hummed in his head which lay placed like a precious object of art on a white cushion in the brilliant air. Space had come to rest around him. Annie had not changed, she’d somehow found the key to living on. She turned her back on the past of Remembering but instead she’d achieved another more puzzling way of lasting, a jump across space: here was her rose still glossy red, her bed full of memories, even her same home-made sheets by some miracle resurrected, her old lampshade none the worse, her choice of lino for those willing to stretch out and look, her very self renewed replaced duplicated, Vivien perfect as a double and even having her gestures, her look.

  At that moment Uncle experienced what he later described as bein hit with the inspiration.

  – We’ve got to fight them, he called.

  The room was full of Vivien and Bill and of Bertha barking into the morning sunshine. Yes, the rose glittered and the world was sponged with new air.

  – We’ve got to fight, he repeated. Instead of mopin about with what was and what ought to be, we’ve got to make it be. No good tryin to explain to the likes of Sebbie or Felissy Brindle. It’s you and me and young Tony’ll make it and Mum Collins god bless her for a scandalous bag of dripping. There was a time when we took to the hills with our guns you see, and that taught the bastards.

  – Calm down, said Annie/Vivien. You’re getting carried away.

  And yes he was subsiding, deflating, hideously, a shrivelled balloon with the air escaping, his real moments abandoned to a different occasion. What was happening? He could no longer distinguish between a Remembering and ordinary life, or could it be the future? and was it still himself or was it Bertha the hound living this nameless airless alarm? Who was the man hammering, up there on a ladder hammering nails into timber, building, putting battens on a roof looking out over the valley like a sweet breath of childhood, and then climbing down, backwards, shakily, feeling the urgent need to lie down somewhere solid and safe. Yet seeing the body from outside, seeing it, himself? come climbing down. Being inside the feeling, yet outside the sufferer. Uncle lay in bed twisting against this vision of fate, against recognition, against the omen of the old man building afresh, the old man lying gratefully on a bare floor. But no, not a man … a dog and in the grass, yes Bertha out in the sunshine lying there with head alert. She lies, ears pricked. Suddenly her head goes up, the long elegant nose pointing to the sky where a hawk circles far above and is gone. She turns her attention to her paws which she licks a few times for the sake of routine. A tiny whistling sound. And her head snaps up again, ears as far forward as they’ll go, the muscles bunching in her haunches ready to give chase, her mouth tightening and the ghost of a growl rumbling through her. At another noise, this time from behind, one ear switches to the job of interpreting it while her attention remains undiverted. Something’s about to happen. The growl becomes almost like a song, evil is in the sunny air. The stupid wrens dart and dance their bright blue patterns and the yellow robin methodically obeys the dictates of his voracious appetite. But something is seriously wrong. Bertha is now standing. Life is out of kilter. The evil has no direction yet. She puffs little exploratory breaths through her nose, scenting, her tail rises stiff and angry. No hawk could interest her now, receiving a telepathic message through her skin as she is. Eyes, ears, nose, all at a pitch of awareness. Her hackles stand right along her spine and in a clump down near the tail. A yodelling cry breaks from her and she stands immobile. She is beginning to know and ready to understand. Birds twitter in and out of the bushes. Insects drone contented with business in the warmth. The hawk resumes that same circle in the high air as if it had been marked out by his repeated passage. Flies promenade the dog’s flank while a few fleas make brief appearances before vanishing industriously back in among the warm fur.

  She knows.

  – We’ve got to fight, Uncle muttered thickly.

  – Calm down, said Annie/Vivien. You’re getting carried away.

  – It’s up to us now, said Uncle with a flash of understanding that the moment had come, the land could be truly claimed as their own, that at last they belonged and if they didn’t defend the mountain, nobody would.

  – It’s up to you to rest, she insisted.

  – Listen. We’ve still got our guns and there’s water at London. Help me out of this bed for christsake Bill me boy. We’re goin to give that little lot a stickybeaks some fun to remember. Can’t lose. It’s in the bag.

  – Uncle, said Bill Swan like a priest, taking hold of his hand to restrain him, and looking at it as if it were no longer part of anybody. Uncle, you’ve been here for two weeks.

  By Thursday Uncle tottered about, learning his first steps, getting used to his walkingstick
s and planning for the morning. The morning had become a matter of urgency because of what he had been told and what he had seen. Quite a lot of things appeared to have happened while he dozed and drifted on that well-remembered bed. For a start a meeting had been called, a meeting with the government men, the Milliners, O Wheelers and the Hallorans. This ought to be stopped. Sebastian should stop it, because once you meet with them you’re on their ground and there’s no beating them.

  Uncle practised with his walkingsticks, earnest as an athlete in training. Two weeks lost: it was a tactical calamity. In the morning he’d have to be able to walk down the hill to the store, it must be done. Then there was the domestic matter of a quarrel: this was hard to believe but young Bill had fallen out with Tony McTaggart… and the two of them close as twins since they were toddlers. And what the hell for! However, you were told to pull your head in and mind your own interfering business. The thing was final, Bill Swan and his mate were at war, nothing less. And this was the very time they needed to stick together for the sake of Whitey’s. The last young people of the town were repeating ancient history, as if nothing could reconcile them.