Thursday's Child

by Sonya Hartnett

  Gerty Campbell, whose property faced ours from the opposite side of the road and who had a turned eye to which I devoted hours of gruesome contemplation, pinched her lizard lips at the very thought of Tin. She spoke in fierce clipped sentences, as if her time was ticking down. ‘Should have warmed his backside at the start. Thora dear. Hear me. When will you put an end to this nonsense?’

  Mam only smiled and looked at the ground. That was what she did, by the time a year had passed, when anyone asked her about Tin.

  ‘Thora dear. Did you hear. Should have warmed his backside. Time he came out.’

  ‘I’ve asked him to come out, Gert, more times than I can count. And sometimes he does, to please me. But he’s a bird in a cage, up here. I don’t want him here as a prisoner.’

  Gerty said, ‘What rubbish.’

  Jock Murphy, who was married to Mrs Murphy, had this to say another day: ‘That’s a wild child you’ve got there, Court. It’s gone a year and he won’t come up of his own accord now, I’d say. You’re letting him have his head, then? You’re going to let him do as he pleases?’

  ‘That’s right, Jock. I think that’s best.’

  ‘And Thora?’

  ‘Thora knows what I think.’

  Mr Murphy whistled. ‘Plenty of others would have tied him to the veranda post to keep him above the ground.’

  ‘You tie dogs and mules to posts,’ said Da.

  When Mr Vandery Cable came snooping, he suggested we fetch buckets. ‘Pour water down the tunnel,’ he said, ‘and soon enough he’ll bob up like a cork.’

  All of us were gazing at Cable’s elevated shanks – the rest of him was down in the dirt, his eyes levelled under the house. All of us were hardly breathing. Vandery Cable was a high and mighty man about the district, the richest person that anybody knew, and him calling on anyone was understood to be a most honouring thing. He made his money out of pigs.

  ‘Tin hasn’t learned to swim,’ said Mam. ‘He’d drown, if we did that.’

  Cable stood, slapping his knees. ‘Not much difference in him being drowned or otherwise, far as I can see. It’s lucky you’ve got these spares, Flute, because that one’s not much use to you. He certainly isn’t earning his keep.’

  Da smiled lamely around the nail he was chewing. Cable looked at Devon. ‘You know what they do on a farm to an animal that isn’t earning its keep, Devon?’

  ‘… Get rid of it.’

  Cable nodded. ‘Get rid of it. That being the case I’d say it’s fortunate you couldn’t call this place a farm, isn’t it?’

  Devon glowered but Cable didn’t note it, he was considering the yard. He asked, ‘What you got growing, Flute?’

  ‘Nothing yet, Mr Cable.’

  ‘Nothing. How many years have you been here? Ten?’

  ‘Round about eight, I’d reckon.’

  ‘Eight years. What have you been doing with yourself, besides breeding? This whole place should be cropped.’

  ‘Our land’s exhausted,’ I informed him, and Cable’s eyes swivelled to me. He was a tiny man, hardly bigger than Devon, with a head of thick black hair and dainty little feet at the end of his scanty body, and his eyes rolled smooth as marbles at the bottom of a pail. He wore wing collars even with his work clothes, and nothing he wore ever dared to crease: whenever you saw him he was all mockered up, as neat as a beetle in its shell. ‘Be a waste of time trying,’ I added.

  ‘Would it now, missy?’ He eyed me a disquieting moment, and I hid casually behind Audrey. He looked, then, at Caffy, who was slapping drooly hands in the dirt. ‘I don’t envy you, Flute,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like to have my fortune hopping around on the ribs of some rabbit. Skinning isn’t going to keep these squibs fed when they’re older, with appetites to match. You want to put your mind to earning, and do it now. You got a piece of land here, so make it work for you.’

  ‘You’re right, Mr Cable, but you see, I’ve never been a farmer –’

  ‘That’s easy to say, Flute, and I don’t doubt you’ll say it until you drop dead from starvation.’ He strode across the yard to his jinker, haranguing over his shoulder. ‘You’ve got responsibilities and it’s time you took hold of them. You aren’t a farmer. Fine: become one. Farming’s no more difficult to learn than anything else. You’ve got your labourers already born to you. You could put that little digger to use ploughing. He’d be cheaper to feed than a horse, anyway.’

  He climbed onto the jinker and yanked the reins of his own horse rudely, making it clop about. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, peering down his nose. ‘I’ll take Devon off your hands and have him taught to string a fence. That will be a start. Accumulate experience from those that have it, Flute, and you’ll shortly have all you need to know about farming, whether in your own head or in the heads of others. What do you say, Devon?’

  ‘Would you pay me, Mr Cable?’

  ‘Devon!’ gagged Da.

  Cable was chortling, though. ‘Course I will, if I’m satisfied. What sort of country would we be living in, if a man didn’t get paid for his sweat? Get yourself over to my place tomorrow, and we’ll put you to the yoke.’

  Devon nodded eagerly, his dark eyes shining. Cable touched his hat to Mam and Audrey, switched the horse and trundled away. Mam and Da stood watching him go and though Caffy’s hand was fastened to Mam’s skirt and tugging it urgently she wasn’t taking any notice of him, and Da was stripping his nails to the quick.

  DEVON STARTED EARLY BECAUSE Cable’s property was well away from our own, past the nearest town and a fair distance after that. Mam fitted him with a pair of Da’s cut-down dungarees and packed a crib of stew and a spoon and his only other luggage was the shirt he was not wearing. He was buzzing round the shanty before dawn, raring to get going, and I could guess why. He could see Champion, that pony, coming magnificent and snorting into view. We didn’t know how long Cable would keep him but Devon said he wasn’t coming home until he had the money to buy the animal that galloped through his dreams. I was bitter at the prospect, knowing he’d never let me so much as touch the thing, hearing already the skiting.

  Mam and I walked to the road with him and waited until the rabbito’s cart came over the rise. Mam tried to help him onto the tray but he shook her hand away and sprang up by himself. He was thirteen, and easily insulted. ‘Be on your best behaviour,’ she told him, and Devon hung his head because her words had made the men sitting beside him snicker and nudge.

  It would be a long day for Devon: when the cart reached the town he’d have to start walking and when the shade was lengthening in the late afternoon Da said he would probably be arriving at the gate of Cable’s homestead with the whole day’s journey smeared across his face. Caffy cried, missing his brother, and Tin crept out of the underground, but he wasn’t a consolation. Caffy shrieked at the sight of him.

  ‘The baby doesn’t know Tin,’ Audrey said quietly. Tin had vanished again, maybe gone as far away as the tunnel would let him, but we were in the habit of speaking low when we didn’t want him hearing something, because we’d been caught out before.

  ‘No,’ said Da.

  ‘He’s been under the house for all of Caffy’s life.’

  ‘So Caffy won’t miss him. You don’t miss what you’ve never had. Caffy won’t grow up feeling any loss.’

  ‘I miss Devon,’ I announced, but no one seemed concerned; Mam passed me a plate of dripping and damper and Audrey poured the tea.

  It was me who spotted Devon first, early evening a week later, trudging toward the house, and I dropped the firewood and went charging down the hill to meet him, whooping out his name. It was only when I was near enough to see his face that I came sliding to a standstill and my words stuttered to a stop. Never had I seen anyone look so downcast as he.

  He went inside and flopped in a chair and we all gathered around. Caffy tried to climb his legs but Mam plucked him away. ‘Devvy?’ she asked, and Devon burst into tears, just like that, as if the sound of her voice sprung a tank behind his eyes.
He was ashamed to be crying, being as he was thirteen, and he hid his face and kicked his feet in angry misery. Mam told us to take the baby and go outside. As soon as the door was shut behind us, Da and Audrey and I pressed our ears to the slab. We couldn’t hear clearly, but we heard enough to make Da swear. Devon said that Cable had given him an hour’s instructing and then made him go out alone, wiring fences from the break of day. But Devon wasn’t as strong as the work needed him to be, and he hadn’t had the practice that would make him do it well. Cable had sent him packing without paying him a penny. Audrey’s eyes were shooting sparks – you could see it in the gloom.

  ‘You should talk to Cable, Court.’ Mam whispered it late that night, when she expected Audrey and me to be sleeping. Devon was out on the veranda, hunched up in his blankets, and I could hear his husky, exhausted breathing.

  ‘It’s best to leave it. What’s done is done.’

  ‘But it’s dreadful for Devon. I’m sure he tried his best. Maybe, if you explained things to Mr Cable …’

  I heard the bed creak as Da shifted his bones. ‘It’s a lesson for him, Thora. You shouldn’t expect life to be fair. My father taught me that, went out of his way to teach me that. He’s never kept a single promise in his life, that man.’

  ‘Let’s not talk of him –’

  ‘When I was young he used to bet me a shilling I couldn’t hit a ball over a fence and when I did it, he’d say the bet only held if it had been a fast bowl, or a googly, or whichever it hadn’t been. He’d say he would bring home something good to eat and when he returned with nothing, after I’d smacked my lips all day, he’d say he never stated which particular day he intended bringing something home. And if I dared complain, he would give me a clip and tell me life wasn’t fair.’

  ‘There’s fairness, and there’s cruelty. Being cruel to a child simply teaches it to be cruel in its turn.’

  There was a length of silence. Then Da said, ‘Cable doesn’t have any little ones, does he? He lost that boy with the influenza.’

  ‘And his wife.’

  ‘Life hasn’t always been fair to him, either.’

  ‘Life’s not been deliberately cruel to him. Life isn’t like that – only people are. I’ll go and speak to Mr Cable myself, tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Thora.’ There was a pause – I wondered if Da was gnawing his nails. Eventually he said, ‘I’ll make the man see sense about the thing.’

  I thought I’d never get to sleep with the worrying but when I woke up next morning Da had gone and Devon was under the house with Tin.

  Vandery Cable’s homestead was set in a garden of tangled briar-roses that had grown for four generations of Cables and that’s where Da met him, amongst the flowers and black-spotted leaves, hearing in the distance the low rumble and alarming shrill of the swine. Only Cable came out of the house but Da could see the station-hand loitering watchful at a window. It was dusk, and a silken wind nudged the brim of Da’s hat until he took it off as Cable sauntered down the steps towards him. Then the breeze frolicked through his hair, mussing it in his eyes. ‘Where’s your heart, Mr Cable?’ is what Da asked the pig farmer.

  ‘Right here in my chest, where it’s always been. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘You owe my son a week’s wages.’

  ‘That’s what he told you, is it?’ Cable laughed open-mouthed, and Da caught a whiff of sherry and saw gold. ‘You should know better, Flute, than to take the word of a boy, having been one once yourself.’

  ‘I hope I’ve raised my children to tell the truth.’

  ‘Then Devon must have told you how I lost two good breeding sows through his sloppy workmanship. That’s my reason for keeping his wages, and I’m running at a loss even doing that.’

  Da scraped the hair from his eyes. Cable’s hair wasn’t bothered by the breeze, having been oiled into a glistening cap. He smiled beneath this shell. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about those sows,’ he said. ‘Walked clear through one of Devon’s baggy fences, both of them, and I haven’t seen a hair of either since. Salted up in someone’s ceiling by now, I’d reckon. It’s a miracle I didn’t lose the herd.’

  Da muttered, ‘No. I didn’t hear that. I’m sorry for it, Mr Cable.’

  ‘So am I. You can understand why I had to let Devon go. I want fences that will keep the creatures in, not let them out.’

  ‘He hadn’t had experience –’

  ‘He got the same teaching everyone gets and all anyone should need.’

  ‘As I say, I’m sorry. He’s just a lad, Mr Cable, not skilful, and it’s likely his attention wandered. He was hoping to buy a pony with his earnings here. He’s been saving for years.’

  ‘I’m not a charity, Flute, nor is my heart the bleeding kind. I’m a landowner, a man of business. To me and men like me, poor work equals poor pay. Would you pay for a job so shabbily done that you lose two quality head of swine?’

  ‘What I’m saying is –’

  ‘No!’ Cable barked. ‘Answer the question, Flute. Would you reward a man for work so shabbily done?’

  Da wrung his hands in silence, buckling his hat. Cable’s mouth twisted.

  ‘Go home, Court,’ he said. ‘Don’t speak about this to me again. I tried to do your family a favour and came out the worse for it, and there’s some that would say I’ve a right to demand from you the price of those hogs, but I’m not asking. Having this conversation with you, however, is tempting me to change my mind.’

  Da had thanked him for his time and set his hat on his head. As he limped away down the cart path he could feel Cable’s eyes tracking him all the way to the gate.

  ‘I did everything anyone could, Thora,’ Da told Mam late that evening. ‘There was no talking sense to him. No matter what I said, he was going to sneak his way around it. He shouted me down, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He deserved the spots knocked off him, but what could I do? Nothing, not with his man standing like a dog at the window.’

  Mam didn’t say a word: all Tin and I heard was the rasp of the bedframe do the sighing for her. In the floorboards beneath the bed Tin had found a knot which could be pried loose and slotted in again, and when it was out you could hear through it just like you can see a room through a keyhole. Mam didn’t speak, because there was nothing for her to say; Tin laid his face on the earth and the moonlight snaking under the house was pooled in his eyes so they glowed at me, clear and cool.

  After that night no one said another word about Da’s visit to Vandery Cable, and because I knew Da would throttle me for eavesdropping I could never mention what I heard and had to play dumb. It meant that I could never ask him why the story was such a strange one, why it was like two mirrors standing opposite each other and spangling reflections – why it was that, when you considered it one way, Devon was the hurt and injured party, but if you viewed it from the other angle, Cable had rightness on his side. I looked from one mirror to the other until my neck cricked, and I still couldn’t puzzle it out. All I could do was what everyone expected me to do, being eight and ignorant. I took Devon’s side and made the insult legendary; the name of Vandery Cable was spoken with a snarl upon my lips.

  Devon never mentioned his pony again, either: his dream had curdled. He took the coins he had painstakingly saved and spent them all at once, not on anything he could keep but on a jar of boiled sweets. In the weeks and months afterwards he grew morose and malcontent, as well as tall and spotty. Mam became concerned; Mr Murphy said it was doubtless his age. He would sit for hours on the veranda with the hem of his trousers riding high on his calves and the sleeves of his shirt unbuttoned on his arms, stroking a dog’s ear and never wanting to do the things we used to do. He would not come exploring, knowing as he did every leaf and stone of the land. The ghost of the miner was not wafting through the mine shaft so there was no point concocting spells that might summon it and put it in our power. Making statues from the creek clay was childish and boring, and, disliking blackberries, what reason would he have
to get torn and sticky collecting them? Why would he want to do any of those things, seeing as how he’d done them already a thousand times before? ‘Go away, Harper,’ he would say, turning his eyes from me.

  The only other thing that happened, after Da visited Cable, was that Tin suddenly started digging for all that he was worth. You’d hear him when you woke in the night, scratching and burrowing. You could hear the dogs crowding him, their solid bodies jostling, their tails thumping the floor. You would hear him getting further away, quarrying through the earth much faster now, striving for his safety.

  SUMMER PASSED AND AUTUMN came and with it came rain, the first we had seen for a year and a half, sometimes heavy and sometimes light and sometimes just a mist on your face as if you’d walked through a cobweb strung between trees, but always, always there. Caffy was scared of it, and would shake his fists and bawl; I cavorted in the puddles and got drenched to the bloomers trying to teach him bravery. Soon he, like me, only found the rain a bleak thing, and we stared from the windows like sad prisoners behind bars. I watched the water drain off the earth through cracks that had opened during summer and I began to feel nervous. Falling ceaseless, the rain seemed to be falling with a purpose. Once there was water enough, something would surely happen. The last time it had rained like this, the creek bank had collapsed on Tin. I watched for him, and worried.

  One afternoon we spotted Art Campbell hurrying toward the shanty with his hands clamped on his head, bowed like a grassblade by the rain upon his back. Mam pulled the door and he made for the fire, jiggling and shedding water. ‘Is something wrong, Art?’ she asked, as he did his vitus dance and we gawped at him bug-eyed.

  ‘You’re as bad as my Gert, Thora,’ he said, struggling out of his jacket while his feet beat the boards. His naked cheeks and scalp had turned a heated shade of pink. ‘A fella can’t get a bit energetic without a woman assuming the worst. That’s right, eh, Court?’