17.
AT FIRST THEY HADN’T KNOWN WHERE TO PUT THEMSELVES — outside with the stockmen and staff, or inside with Rufina’s guests. Irving wanted to be with Bill and Jell, and Jell wanted to be near Helena, who was needed to help, so that was why they ended up in Eddie’s wing, rather than from any desire to mix with the disparate bunch inside. The gawping faces reminded Irving of the tourists at home, intent on the boiling mud pools and geysers and carvings and small boys diving for coins from the bridge. The fascination here was the grand lonely house, the rooms with their rich furnishings and curtains, carved ceilings, the painting of the Fenchurch ancestor borrowed from the library, the artfully arranged seats. It was the sight of one another togged up for the party; it was staring at Fenchurch’s Maori grandson and at Bill and Jellicoe. Irving was ill at ease.
As soon as they came in, Nance, who was also decorated with Helena’s lipstick though not as thickly, shoved a tray of sandwiches at him. ‘Here, hand these round.’
There was the smell of Bay Rum and 4711, of sweat and Flit, which had been sprayed around earlier that morning to dissuade mosquitoes. A sun-boiled red-and-white farmer with his hat still on inside thoughtfully looked Irving up and down, took a sandwich, and chewed, still staring. Beside him stood the nearest tobacco farmers, the Hing Yes. They’d arrived in an old truck, the men standing in the back and three women crowded in with the driver in the cab. Only one of the women was inside, together with the oldest man, who contemplated the sandwiches before declining. Irving ate one himself, cucumber, tasteless. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bill drifting towards the guitars.
‘Irving, aren’t you?’ asked the woman, smiling with small brown teeth, oblivious to her companion’s tempering glance. The few Chinese women he’d met never said boo but this one had a sparkle. Much younger than her husband, if that’s who he was, and head to foot in dark blue satin, flowers and birds edge to edge. A high collar stood around a little neck slender enough to snap in a high wind. ‘We have heard of you. Mr Fenchurch’s grandson.’
‘That’s me, all right,’ said Irving. He shook the old man’s hand, since he couldn’t shake the pretty woman’s, and suddenly Rufina was at his elbow taking the tray, acting all gay and strange, urging him to join Bill on stage.
‘Give us some Bing,’ said a man as he passed.
Bing — bigger than Cole Porter or his namesake Berlin — but Irving didn’t know any and felt his confidence ebb. Bing Crosby. Very vaguely some lines lifted in his mind about the dark of the night and the yellow day, and the usual longing of love songs. There wasn’t enough of it to even begin figuring it out.
Bill sat at the piano and played the opening lines of ‘Isa Lei’, a Fijian song he’d picked up along the way, and Irving came to lean beside him, harmonising a sliding third above, ‘Isa Isa, you are my only treasure.’ Bill had his eyes closed and his fingers spreading over the shiny keys. They sang quietly, and conversations continued around them, the occasional exchange leaping to Irving’s buzzing ears — weather, the economy, the last stock sale, rumblings of war in Europe. A man with a booming laugh drowned out the closing chords of each verse as if he’d planned it.
As the punch flowed, the party got rowdier, hardly bending an individual ear to ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, or ‘Mockingbird’ straight after, so they picked up their guitars and sang a waiata aroha that everyone knew at home. ‘Me he manu rere ahua e’, the lover wishing he was a bird so that he could fly swiftly to her arms. ‘Kua rere ki to moenga, Ki te awhi to tainana’, hold you and caress you. ‘E te tau, tahuri mai.’ Despite or because of the soppy words, they lifted the tempo, played with a strong downward strum and Jell joined them to swell their voices. They sang it right through three times, enough for Helena and her Aunty Bridgie standing close to start swaying and singing along la la la. The tobacco farmer and his wife were attentive and most of the others slowly shut up and listened. At the French windows the resident swaggies appeared with Albert and some of the others from the outside table, and Irving beckoned them in, catching Rufina’s disapproving stare in the crowd but letting his gaze travel past her.
They sang the ‘Tennessee Waltz’ and then someone called for ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, and in a flash everyone was singing along, some harmonies lifting here and there. Only a few voices knew all the words, everyone joining in on the lines about open land and starry skies and riding to the west. The song could have come from here but it didn’t, it was American.
The carter’s wife from Lismore came up to sit at the piano for the next few numbers, songs from the war mostly, and she wasn’t too bad, though Irving thought that it might have been better if she didn’t sing along in her high flutey voice. True, he could hardly hear her above the guitars and Bill and Jellicoe, and then she called up her lad, who began ‘O for the wings for the wings of a dove’ while the other musicians stood idle. By the third squeaky verse the guests grew restless and talkative so Bill and Irving took the chance to melt away outside again, to where the keg stood and the stockmen were dancing. A stag dance, almost, since there were not enough women to go around.
Flasks of fiery Scotch were passed hand to hand, and Irving took his turn from each, glad to be outside and away from the attention of the other room. Time sped, slowed, sped again, and drunker than he’d ever been he conceived of the notion to go and release his dogs, which had been tied up before the guests arrived. Across the kitchen yard and past the servants’ quarters he went, through the gate and past the old creamery where there were vehicles — the motors and carts of the visitors. The sawing and buzzing of the night insects was quieter, and he thought at first it could be the changing season but knew in his heart it wasn’t; it was because of the change in his hearing, less and less of it all the time.
He let the dogs off, let them run around in the cool evening air and stood looking up at the house, the myriad windows of the belvedere flaring with the last of the light, the shadowy gables and eaves. The longer he stayed at Jarulan, the more Rufina took him into her bedroom, the more he willingly returned, the more normal life seemed and the more trapped he became. It couldn’t go on. Some part of him wanted Rufina to be the one to end it; she had started it, she had forced his hand, and so she should show her wisdom and seniority in bringing it to a close.
The shadow of a man passed across the landing window, the red shield in the crest obscuring it for an instant before the silhouette regained its shape in the clear panel at the side. Not a man. Evie Falkirk, the swaggie lady, the outline of the hat she wore to hide her sparse hair. It crossed his mind that it was odd for her to be upstairs, since she had no cause to be, not since Rufina had ordered them out of the nursery wing, where they had stayed for a few days after they first arrived. Perhaps she had left some of her belongings up there and was suddenly in need of them. She hadn’t had much to begin with. Another couple of shadows loomed and shrank — Eric and the other man. If he wasn’t so drunk he’d go and find out what was going on.
He lay down in the grass, though he knew he shouldn’t because of snakes. The dogs bounded and the young one pounced on him, puppy-like. He calmed it enough to let it lie on his chest and gazed up at the stars, emerging now through the high, deep blue-black. Were they different from the stars at home? He hadn’t ever known the map, had no cause to. Tawera, the Evening Star, Venus — one and the same — had risen in the east. He searched for Matariki, the Pleiades, still too dim to pick out — or was it that in this country he was shifted sideways, northwest of his own sky? Rehua, the brightest star of all, the one called Sirius in English, shone to the south. The Dog Star.
Sirius. That’s what he’d call this pup, which had no name yet. Sirius, asleep on his chest, keeping him safe until morning.
So dead to the world was he that the noisy protracted departure of the guests did not disturb him. Neither was he woken by the chill of the coldest hours before dawn. The dogs slept close around him and the grog robbed him of cohesive dreams, leaving him with only shards and fr
agments — a ravening mouth searching for his, a prize bull cast and bloated in a ditch, the thin white arms of a woman held beseechingly towards him, or was it a child? Yes, a child with its feet bound in strips of cloth and the rigging of an old sailing ship whistling around them, the child tugging at him, pleading with him to take her home, and he couldn’t find the words to tell her he couldn’t, that he was lost himself and very cold, and the furious child shook him with the strength of a man — it was Albert shaking him awake, none too gently.
‘You’re wanted in the house. Big trouble.’
‘What’s happened?’
But Albert wouldn’t tell him. ‘Go and see Missus,’ he said, his eyes sad.
He went first to the bedroom since that was where she most often wanted him but it was empty of her. Back down the stairs he went, his dull ears pricked for any human movement in the vast house. He was reluctant to listen too closely, to open himself to the unseen forces the women talked about — the soldier, the woman in white, the rolling wheels … There — from the corridor that ran past the library on the northern side of the house, the way to the trophy room — the slide and slam of a drawer. The library door was open and Rufina was bent over the desk, wrapped in an embroidered silk robe that reminded him of Mrs Hing Ye’s gown. She had only just arisen it seemed, her hair unbrushed, her face creased with sleep.
‘Go after them,’ she said, as soon as he entered.
‘Who?’
‘Those people you brought to the house. They’ve stolen from us.’
He first thought she was talking about guests from the night before, but he had invited no one. She ran on, firing questions at him about his whereabouts and why hadn’t he and Bill played for longer and did he realise how distressed she was when she couldn’t find him?
‘Where were you?’ she asked again, as if the first astonishing thing she had told him was secondary to his neglect. His tongue refused to respond, lolling like a broken bale in the bilge water of his mouth. He needed a drink of water, or some tea, and he wondered if Nance and Helena were up yet. He looked for the polished wooden clock on the mantelpiece — it was gone. So was the emu egg that had stood beside it, mounted on a domed base with leaves of wheat and lizards and frogs wrought in silver. He had thought it was beautiful. Rufina was drawing close and studying his face.
‘What do you know about it?’
Nothing. He knew nothing and would have told her so — but then he remembered how he had seen Evie and the men on the upstairs landing. Rufina must have seen the flicker of recollection cross his face because now she was tugging at him like the little girl in his dream, pulling him out of the room and down the corridor, out of the house towards the stables.
‘We’ll take the Ford. We’ll go and see where they are.’
It was her first utterance without an accusatory tone and he felt himself find a bit of balance. ‘What else did they take?’
‘Jewellery — my pearls and some paste. Silver from the dining room. The Tasmanian tiger.’
Irving hadn’t been aware that there had been a tiger, Tasmanian or otherwise.
‘We kept it in the nursery room since Louisa lived there,’ she told him. ‘She loved it.’ Rufina hesitated, as if she was reluctant to go on. ‘And Boss. They took Boss.’ Her voice broke on his name, the name Irving had given him.
They were almost at the garage, built as a lean-to at the end of the stables. Irving stopped short and returned to the stable door at a run. Albert was in there, hanging over Boss’s door, the only horse they had taken.
‘Knew a good horse when they saw one, they did,’ Albert said, without turning to look at him. Irving went to stand beside him, slipping a comforting arm across his shoulders. Together they stared into the empty stall, weeping. Albert had loved him as much as Irving did.
Rufina had the engine running by the time he had gathered himself again, the effects of the night’s drinking knocked away by the loss.
‘Here,’ she slipped across the bench seat, ‘you drive. We can’t waste another moment. Where was it that you found them? They could have returned there.’
Down the driveway and along the river road she kept her hands clenched in her embroidered lap. He took the old road up the hill, the one that led past the memorial, even though he knew the swaggies would not have gone back to their camp. The last place.
‘How?’ he managed, as the car laboured up the gradient. ‘How did they do it?’
‘I suppose the number of people in the house provided cover,’ she said, and something else in addition, which he didn’t hear above the rattle and bang of the engine.
‘We don’t know for certain that it was them, then,’ he said. ‘Could have been anyone.’
She squeezed his knee, clamping the other hand over her mouth, and it took a second or two for him to understand that she wanted him to stop the car. He pulled on the brake, skidded to a halt in the dirt. They were almost at the crest, the memorial rising above the trees.
Rufina heaved into the long grass at the side of the road while Irving stayed in the car, gripping the steering wheel and staring blankly ahead. He was not going to look at her in case it made her ashamed and embarrassed. Dry retching from the sounds of it; nothing in her stomach to get rid of. A flock of cockatoos came to rest in the mango tree above her; he let them take his attention, the bobbing sulphur crests and quick eyes. He wondered if they knew one another, if they could distinguish one from the other and remembered their sister or father, and so knew not to fall in love, if birds did fall in love — and was so occupied when Rufina climbed back in and slammed the door after her.
‘All right?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘On.’
For a moment the memorial stood in the window, dust willies lifting at the rusty fence, then the gums and she-oaks resumed down the hill to meet the new river road, where the swaggies’ old campsite was deserted, as Irving knew it would be. He slowed to show her, pointing out where he had met them, and Rufina gave a little moan as if she would be sick again, pale as he’d ever seen her, deathly pale. A dead lamb. He stopped completely and leaned across her to open her door.
‘I’m all right.’
‘Too much to drink last night, eh,’ he said, as a statement. That’s what was causing it. He’d feel sick himself if he wasn’t so sad.
‘Turn it around and we’ll go through Bangalow and down to the coast road.’
‘We could keep going this way up to Lismore. Inland.’ That’s the way he’d go if he were them. Head to the centre and get lost in the desert.
‘No — they’ll be going the coast road.’
He did as he was asked even though one or two of them could easily have gone the other way: they could have split up, two taking the cart and the other Boss to sell as soon as he was far enough away for the buyer not to make any connections. Splitting up would be the wise thing to do, if they wanted to succeed. Fury flickered and rose. Damn them to hell! On the day he’d met them they had thought Boss wasn’t his. He was. As much as anything was. The Ford, the farm, the house, the woman beside him.
None of it was his, actually. That was the truth of it. Not yet. Perhaps never. The adventure could be over today, right now, with the loss of the horse — a sign that he should leave.
They passed the lion gates of Jarulan and skirted the lower fields until the road swung away from the river to wind its upland way to Clunes. The air rushing in the open window felt dry and cool; lush grass silvering in the scudding wind. There were sweet scents rising from the earth and a clean sky threaded with wisps of cloud — the kind of day for hopes and dreams, if it were an ordinary day.
‘Your grandfather fell in love with me here, on this road,’ Rufina said. ‘I remember the moment it happened — we were riding for the doctor after Louisa’s fall.’
Irving felt his guts clench, low down. He didn’t want to know about that, how that tree and this road and that view of the mountains bore witness. He didn’t want to know — but he heard hims
elf ask, ‘And the same for you?’
Some of the colour had returned to her cheek. She flashed him a look that seemed guilty, even remorseful.
‘Not right away. Later I grew to love him. At first I was flattered, I suppose. Grateful. And curious. I had never before known a man like him — and he was part of all this, part of Australia.’
Irving gave the steering wheel one short, sharp punch and felt the better for it. He would not look at her but he could tell she was smiling, and he realised she had told him all that not for the pleasure of recall but to see his response. She was testing him.
There was no sign of the swaggies all the way to Clunes, where St Peter’s doors stood open. Of course, it was Sunday. He wanted suddenly, desperately, to worship, playing it through silently of how it would be if he parked among the other motors and horse-drawn wagons and took his place, the only brown face among the congregation. He would take Rufina with him. She had shocked him with her ignorance of the Bible. Perhaps if she had more knowledge of it then she might learn to regret her actions.
‘You don’t seriously think the thieves would have gone to church?’
That scornful tone. He wished she wouldn’t. Shaking his head, he drove on past the general store and a row of little wooden houses that reminded him of New Zealand, and up the last steep hill to where the road turned a sharp corner at the top, the highest point for miles around. He stopped again to search along the valleys and lower roads for a glimpse of the cart and old horse, for Boss, for the red cloche hat. A sign read ‘To Dunoon’, the smaller road leading to their left. Thick green forest enclosed it for as far as he could see. They could be hiding in there.
‘We’ll go on,’ Rufina instructed, ‘to Bangalow.’
‘If I were them I’d go that way.’ He pointed into the green tunnel. ‘Hide away until it was safe to come out.’
She stared at him, then smiled, leaning across to ruffle his hair. ‘Such a lad. It’ll never be safe, not while I’m around. There’s a policeman in Bangalow — we’ll call in.’
Jarulan by the River Page 33