by Rodney Hall
Picking hairs from his nostrils and sneezing as a result, Uncle decided to confine himself for the present to his program of physical reclaim. Just that. He’d know what to think and what to say when he got there and heard the full story from Sebbie’s own lips. Meanwhile it was a bit of steel in the wrists he needed. A long time since the polo field at Jahore, ay? Or was that him? Getting a bit muddled by luxury.
– It’s not you I’m crooked on, he assured Vivien when she appeared hurt. It’s my stupid self for gettin too old to be any use. I’ve got to do somethin because I know what’s right. And he watched her as she painted the windowframes green. Nice dob a colour, that, he remarked. Can’t recall anyone paintin anythin in these parts since George had a go at the milkshed, about when them nongs went off to be heroic in the last shindig in 1939, all about nothing.
– I wouldn’t call that about nothing, she retorted, stung, the memories of being bombed still fresh.
– Of course it was. Same people is still runnin the world right now, bar a couple of them. Isn’t that right? All they did was kill off millions who done nothin and got nothin out of it. That’s how I see it. Clearin away the surplus in a manner a speakin, like the bloody plague, but into the bargain look what they did to the governments of the world, forced them to hand over their money to factory johnnies makin guns and aeroplanes, they was the ones with the whiphand. Winnin form. Now isn’t that right? Looks that way to me. Course I’m only an old bushman sittin up on my little mountain like Jacky; and you’ve travelled the world. But it costs nothin to have an opinion. And if you’ve got no opinions where’s your civilization? It’s an unhealthy smell paint has these days, never used to be half so bad, as I remember. Then a course I’m deaf as a gate and they say that sharpens yer nose. Probably I’m growin more particular with age too.
Good heavens, she saw it: here was the whole town fighting against preservation of their buildings beyond their own use, while she was busy painting Aunty’s house. Quietly she rolled her brush in newspaper, placed the lid on the paint tin and left them to rot. No wonder there was something in Senator Halloran’s tone when he said at least there’s somebody in Whitey’s Fall painting.
Uncle was as good as his promise; the following morning he wheezed into the general store, each step a labour, waving aside Felicia’s anxious attempts to prevent him barging straight through into Fido’s den. This was no time for courtesies, he was exhausted and had to sit where he could talk in private. He made for the kitchen where he remembered it was. Two hens and a cockerel skidded on the lino in a desperate squawking attempt to escape out the back door. Sebastian, drifting in from the yard, his halo of white hair wispier than ever, his tunic vaster and more blurred at the edges, withdrew politely to let the fowls past. And then greeted his visitor.
– Sebbie we’ve got to stop them, Uncle declared as he crashed into a chair. Sweet reason won’t stop them, that’s for sure.
– And you mean that God has given it to us to have the necessary supplies?
– Well he certainly doesn’t seem to have had me in mind, Uncle replied astutely.
– Do you remember how they came out to enlist us Uncle?
– Surely you wasn’t old enough then?
– I was past thirty.
– Well now, how time plays tricks. Yes and we put on a good show too, thanks to ladies handicap events at the showground.
– This is a serious matter then.
– It’s the life or death of all we stand for, Uncle replied promptly, banging the table with his hand and looking round in surprise at how unfamiliar this kitchen had become in the twenty-seven years since he was here last. Sebastian did not reply for a long time, but sat staring through the window from which he’d seen Mrs Ping’s truck lurch out of sight, from which he’d seen fate as a blue car approaching round the curves, also Bill Swan’s motorcycle slewing down a matter of minutes too late; and then because he hadn’t moved, he’d been able to watch the shuttle bring back the same threads through the tapestry God was completing, the motorcycle and the car; the continuity homed in his mind, the end, the beginning; the purpose. He had persevered with sitting there till the very parliamentarian he’d once written to in anger intruded on his privacy wanting to telephone the Yalgoona police. We prefer not to enter into debate on the subject of our own lives, Sebastian Brinsmead Esq, he had written, rather we would ask that you extend us the courtesy of regarding the matter as closed… no such courtesy had been extended, instead the senator came in person, not to listen but to persuade; these historical and aesthetic resources were apparently to be exploited despite any opposition.
– We were up on the hill behind the hotel, Sebastian said smiling serenely.
– They want to fill this place with trinket shops and them carpark things. If you’re lucky, Uncle added slyly. You’ll get a prime job considerin that beard of yours, real picture it is, that beard, the tourists’ll want you in all their snaps, you’ll be a regular favourite I’ll guarantee.
– To be quite honest with you Uncle, we don’t know what we might have in the shop. Things accumulate, you’ll understand, over a long period.
– Explosives and ammunition, we need. When can yer let me know?
BOOK FIVE
The Watch that Ends the Night
One
The brutal facts of the matter were these: Bill Swan and Tony McTaggart had argued in the bar of the Mountain, the word she was shouted on both sides, they’d then gone out the back according to custom and to save violating the Rememberings going on in there; Tony had knocked his enemy (his paragon) unconscious in the dirt and left him like that; Billy who found the shame insupportable prowled the street for days, a puppet of revenge. Those were the facts as everyone knew. Whitey’s Fall was thrown into confusion, something deep and basic being threatened; the two last remaining of their young people were going to murder each other. Cain and Abel playing out their drama again, Romulus and Remus, old memories. The town felt itself dying, for the first time. Individuals lost their vigour, hands grew shaky, eyes dimmed, deafness became contagious, disused crutches and sticks were dusted and put into service, tractors and cars broke down with multiple minor faults, bits of iron began slipping off roofs, cats’ teeth fell out, horses limped, dogs grew grey round the muzzle, the wind blew harder and dust crept into rooms where it had never been allowed to settle before. The old people felt themselves futilely old which was worse. Mr Ian McTaggart was ashamed of being one hundred and two, with the knowledge that because of his great-grandson Tony he might not reach one hundred and three and could not guarantee the town would survive longer than himself; could not imagine the town had any chance once he was dead. Mrs McAloon as the oldest resident took root in her chair like some twisted parasitic vine and said here she would stay and wait for Redemption. They were brought up against it: the highway already intruding over the skyline, the machines audible all day, things would not go on for ever; and now these sole survivors of the plague of boy children were locked in a determination to kill off the tribe as gruesomely and publicly as possible.
A whole week after the fight people spoke in undertones and seldom visited the hotel. Rememberings seemed pointless if there was to be no future. Miss Brinsmead herself began to forget things. Mr Brinsmead, standing as ever in his shop against the wall, was no longer heard to chuckle at intuitions of God’s purpose; Mum Collins suffered pangs of angina and closed her door against the morning tea circle; the great agglomeration of repair work at the welder’s shed stood untouched, for Tony had taken himself off without a word. No one knew what Mr Ping was doing with his time, certainly not the jobs on hand. The only person who did see him actually decided to seek him out: Vivien believed that now at last her opportunity had come to do something for her Whitey’s Fallers. As both an outsider and an intimate, her privilege stood clear in her mind. She would find Tony. She would explain. This much she knew, in some way she was to blame, that he and Billy had fought over her. It must be done frankly and neu
trally, there must be the chance to talk, for him to release his pent-up frustration. Even to see the situation had a comic side to it. All she needed was to find him.
As it happened, he came to find her. Tormented with doubts and suppositions, he could think of no other solution to his misery.
One morning Billy went off to work for Uncle to cut away some of the vines and clear his yard. Tony arrived at the house, calling out from the gate, a huge awkward pale presence, refusing to go indoors to Billy’s sewer of love and what else. Vivien proposed a walk then, put on her shoes and followed him. One behind the other they were refugees hurrying through the paddocks across illegal boundaries till they could no longer be seen from the town. The way they walked, that jointless action, the way they kept looking back over their shoulders, declared their guilt and they knew it.
– Who owns this place? she asked as he held the strands of barbed wire apart for her to climb through a fence.
– Pings. This one was Alice’s paddock.
Foreboding filled her. The warm day, the dappled sky a flat slab of blue marble with the mountain a plain blue fault in it, the dusty grass, the stiff wind driving her on in case her resolve might weaken, none of it reassured her. Her instincts clamoured to warn her she was making a mistake.
– Mrs Ping, she said with horror, afraid of treading on a hand.
– One of the best, he nodded.
– And you work for Mr Ping don’t you? she asked seeing herself as she had run into the workshop one morning shouting that the woman was in danger in her truck. And later, her hands hot with shapes of Bill Swan, death in her lungs, she’d stood while Mr Ping asked who says my wife didn’t know?
– He’s alright but he doesn’t like us, Tony confessed observing his boots crushing the windswept grass. Calls us cattle. I hear him in there. Then, how’re the cattle? he asks me every morning the same when I come in to work. And you hear the ladies at Mum Collins’s having a laugh. Hear that? he says, it’s milking time again!
Vivien thought of herself laughing at that morning tea club. Would they never get anywhere through all this grass? She wanted to escape the place where Alice stood bellowing for help, poor Alice too old for bearing another calf. The consequences of fertility. They passed a metal bucket on its side, quite new and out of place. Even the wind seemed powerless to dispel the shapes of flight in paralysis.
Tony led the way out through another fence and back on to the track, towards a boxy brown building with a white cross nailed to the end wall. He was taking her where no one ever went. Here they could be certain of talking without interruption. In one of those abrupt changes of mood typical of the mountain, everything was restored to its customary beauty, the blood flowing again, the numbness gone, birds calling, the scent of warm grass billowing up. They had put the threat behind them and were received into a seductive delusion that all was pure and safe: Vivien reassured and refreshed, Tony buoyant at having lured her here for a dreamed-of assignation, for the words, the fantastic sentimental words he had rehearsed. Wasn’t this a victory already, a victory over Bill?
– The road is what people want, he said, making use of the alternative conversation to the weather.
– The people of Whitey’s? she asked in disbelief.
– No, all the other people. They want it. (He needed to explain that they didn’t have to know why they wanted it, nor did they have any choice in what they could want. But he had no words for his knowledge. A road was the thing, like God might be the thing, or starting a war. People went mad at the thought of a road, that was all, they killed each other on roads, sacrificed home and safety to roads, trees and gardens had to go, river banks, hills had to be sliced in half, if you only went as far as Yalgoona you could see that for yourself, rabbit warrens and wombat holes had to be bulldozed under, money needed for feeding the sick and aged had to be taken for roads, given for roads and willingly. This he understood and, naturally, he meant her to understand. How could any more be said? And why didn’t she cotton on to this for herself? But then she was not just a city woman but a pom, the kind of person who has to put things down on paper before she can see what they mean. Yet he wanted her to see, if only so she’d have to respect him for knowing something unknown to her. Clumsiness was his downfall. Billy at least had the words, yes Billy could talk himself out of the grave. So Tony knew, even as he sorted through his recollected lessons for words, as he listened now for Mrs Ping’s weary repetitions, what he longed to express was perhaps an idea Vivien couldn’t understand, because she didn’t already know it, feel it. Yes he knew, with his deep desire not to be exceptional. He wanted to explain, but this was the kind of thing that never did get explained. Apart from which, she robbed him of energy simply by being there with him, by having come, enjoying it, the two of them alone. His clumsiness came to his aid, he could hide behind that, play the dumb country idiot, his helpless failure to explain could be passed off without betraying its complex causes.)
They were standing at the porch of the disused church watching wasps clustered round a couple of nests under the guttering. The insects filled the quiet morning with tremendous activity, sounding tuneful as a mouth organ. Tony and Vivien stepped forward together. They were in a vestibule of blotchy red walls where ecclesiastical lilies and trefoils had been stencilled, crude as graffiti.
– How cool it is, she said giving her short curly hair a shake.
Yes and it smelt of the mountain, it had been empty so long, this tiny chamber filled with wasp-song. Vivien realized she was a fool.
– Straw, said Tony McTaggart digging the toe of his boot in some straw rotting beside the doorway. Rather this than trying to explain to her what she couldn’t understand about Hughie Milliner and the road workmen.
They didn’t look at each other, some delicacy prevented this happening, entering the little timber church itself, glancing about them like the captives of headhunters being shown the altar where they would be stars of their last performance. Yes this was a case of something close to panic. The dark red walls, old caked blood, the white ceiling dirty with a grime unknown in civilized parts, the apse a corrugated iron lean-to painted pale blue, its roofing speckled with stars; and where the altar had been lay a dump of decaying lino.
– Lino, he said nodding his shaggy head so that her attention was drawn to his neck which might be as big round as her waist only that this was a ridiculous idea. She saw how immense he was and how terrible he could be if it weren’t for those shy boy’s eyes and the nervous tremble of his lips, also the softening of hairs, silky on his arms, tangled and coarse on his chest. She recognized his patience and tolerance, his perpetual yearning, the great spirit that had driven his body into an exile of uncertainty.
Around the arch of the apse HOLY HOLY HOLY had been painted in gold gothic letters of not quite equal size; and this made Vivien love the place as people had loved it before they abandoned it. The two of them stepped across gaps in the flooring, still hearing the wasps droning their hymnal from monastery cells they’d built under the guttering. What Tony could not explain was that people wanted a road, that a road was a kind of sacred object which you didn’t have to decide about or justify; known to be what man must make. Her ignorance of this was obvious. She thought you could argue about it and reason with it, she treated Senator Halloran and Hughie Milliner as if they might be persuaded to her point of view, as if they might see Whitey’s Fall as an exception and not build the road after all. It was impossible for them not to build the road. You might as well ask them to justify sleeping, you might reason that they spend a third of their life in bed which could be better used. For himself, he knew why they built the road. He hated and feared it but he did know why they had to build it. Yet she, with all her learning and her travel, she could not seem to understand this. Despite her softness and tact, she was too rigid and inflexible in her beliefs to know what they were doing. Uncle knew, muttering about gelignite and violence: he knew. But she with her talk of committees, petitions, del
egations and letters to the editor, showed no comprehension whatever, the darling lady. So small she appeared to him, yet so bursting with fire and ideas. For a stolen second he glanced down at the top of her head and a possessive feeling flowed through him as honey. Somewhere barricaded inside him a vibration was triggered: with a sensation of leaping he recognized it, he’d been through this experience once before. The vibration hummed to the pitch of the wasps busy with construction and storage. Outside the windows Tony could see lush paddocks, but Vivien wasn’t tall enough, all she saw were treetops and, draped across the high sill, a pair of disintegrating trousers. The obscenity of the trousers raised fury in her, uncaring for safety she strode across the gapped floor and threw the trousers out, but they wouldn’t go, snagged on rusty nails they clung there so she had to tear and rip them free, she had to hold them disgusted though she felt, and make an exhibition of how enormous they were. At last she flung them clear and turned red-faced to her companion, who was thinking ludicrously they might well have fitted him.
– People! she swore, her voice for the first time raised above a murmur.
He nodded, hoping to distract her from what had till now been hidden by those trousers: a heart daubed on the wall with an arrow through it, an arrow with a penis head, and the legend Bubbles loves me. He would like to protect her from that.
– It used to be a church, he said idiotically.
She went to where the pulpit once stood and faced him. She was serious but smiling, perhaps a little timid, and anxious to rid herself of all anger and fear.
– I love it, she said reviving the vibration in him. The bees love it too.
– Wasps, he whispered or didn’t whisper.
– My great-aunt used to take me to church in England sometimes. Her favourite was the Palm Sunday sermon. She could cry over that. The church decked with sprigs of willow. And the lesson about how they strowed the pavement with palmleaves and Jesus entered Jerusalem. Aunt Annie would cry over that and say, look what they did to him when he got there though. She used to go to church in a big hat covered with real flowers on Palm Sunday and she’d have flowers pinned to her dress as well. It took ages to get her ready in the morning. But it meant more to her, for some reason, than Easter or Christmas. And to think it might all have started here in this church. I must write and tell her the news. Look, part of a hymnbook! Vivien stooped to reach down between the rotten boards, retrieving a few dog-eared pages between covers.