by Alex Miller
Lena said, ‘I’ll pour it in a minute. Sit down and talk to Ray. Will you stay and have something to eat with us, Ray?’
Ray said, ‘Thank you, Lena, but I ate a breakfast with Peggy Mallon an hour ago. Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Go ahead, Ray.’
He made a cigarette and lit it. ‘You’ve got plenty of feed on this place, Robert. It’s dry feed but it’s good. There’s been no stock on here for a number of years. You should get your boundary fences in good repair quick smart and I’ll take you up to the Braidwood sales and we can pick up a couple of yards of in-calf heifers for you. They’ll do well here.’
Lena was standing at the table with the tea things. She said, ‘How much will the heifers cost?’
‘They won’t cost you anything. Jim Forbes at the Australian Estates office who sold you this place, he’ll be happy to stock her for you. You’ll pay him back over three seasons with half the proceeds of your sales of the vealers each year and them heifers will become the basis of your breeding herd. If we get this rain now, prices will be going up again. Everyone will be looking for breeders. You wait. I’ve seen it a dozen times after these big droughts.’
Lena poured the tea and handed cups around. She had buttered a few Jatz biscuits and set them out on one of her mother’s flowered plates. Ray took one of the biscuits and thanked her. He munched a while then drank some tea and took a pull on his cigarette, staring into the cold ashes of the open hearth in front of him. ‘I’ll take you over to Cooma, Robert. We’ll get you a good Hereford bull from old Jack Francis. Jack’s a good friend of mine. He’ll let you have one of his bulls at a fair price. His line is bred from the original Vern sires from England.’
Lena said, ‘And will Jim Forbes pay for the bull too?’
‘No he won’t, Lena. You will pay for the bull yourselves and you will not be sorry that you did.’ He drank the last of his tea and looked into his cup. Lena asked him if he’d like another. He gave her a smile and passed the cup to her. ‘You need to put in for the mail contract, Robert,’ he said. ‘We’ve had no one running the mail now for a year. You’ll be sure to get the contract. We’re all hungry for someone reliable. It’s cash in hand at the end of each month.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘And you can cut yourselves a load of wattle bark with them tomahawks I left on the verandah for you. There’s a feller still buying tanbark in Moruya.’
Lena handed him a fresh cup of tea. He thanked her and turned to Robert. ‘You shoe horses, Robert?’
‘Yes I do,’ Robert said.
‘I might get you to put a set of shoes on that old gelding of mine when you’ve got a chance. My back’s getting a bit past it these days.’ As he said this he reached around and rubbed his lower back.
Robert said, ‘I’d be glad to. Whenever you want. Just give us a yell.’
Lena was sitting up at the table watching Ray, her chin in her hands. She said, ‘Why did they need such an amazing barn on this place?’
Ray lifted his hand and pointed through the wall. ‘That barn of yours was a great event when they built her. When I was a boy the old people still talked about setting up those corner posts. We used to have weekly dances there. They put her up after the men came back from the First World War. A lot of them fellers from the valley never came back. There was a need for a place where people could get together. There was a whole community of people down here in the lower valley in those days. All these small freehold sections of yours up along the creek, they was each owned by a different family. That’s why they’re called John’s and McLeary’s and Mallon’s and the rest of them. There was families all through the timber and along the creek in those days. Now there’s just one or two left. The men cut props for the mines and fossicked for gold and picked fruit in Araluen. We had a Lower Araluen school then. She’s still there opposite my place, next to the church. The priest hasn’t come up the valley this far for it must be twenty years. Old Father O’Halloran used to keep his racing stallion on my place. That filly of yours up the river is out of him. Cotton Patch was his name. They kicked Frank O’Halloran out of the priesthood and he went and got married.’ Ray sat back, gazing into the dead hearth. He drank off his tea and reached for his hat and stood up. ‘That barn of yours was the centre of life down here. Thank you, Lena. I will call in tomorrow and see how you are all getting on.’ He turned to Robert. ‘You go up to the pub and see Aunt Molly about that mail contract today. She will sign you up on the spot.’
After he’d gone, Lena looked at Robert and grinned. ‘Ray’s got your work organised for you. Catching horses and running the mail and fixing the fences and shoeing his horse for him.’ She laughed. ‘I think that might be just the beginning. You’re going to be busy.’
Ed leaned across from the couch, offering his profile of Ray for her inspection. She took the sketchbook in her hand and looked at it. ‘God, it really is him! You’ve got a magic eye, Ed.’ She handed the book to Robert. A few quick lines, assured and confident, Ray’s mane of white hair mostly a blank area, a touch of the pencil sufficient indication, the heavy line of his broken nose below his brows. Robert felt a sharp pang of jealousy. ‘It’s brilliant,’ he said. He was dismayed by the ease of Ed’s freedom. It was so simple for him. He and Ed exchanged a smile in which there was a perfect understanding of their difference. Ed said, ‘Thanks, mate.’ Robert thought of his typewriter sitting in its case on his desk in the back room, the knotted complications of his need to write. He handed the sketchbook back to Lena. She sat looking at the drawing, Ed watching her. He said, ‘Ray’s an old Roman centurion. He must have been a real heartbreaker when he was young.’
Robert stood up. ‘I’ll go and see about this mail run.’
The pup was at the door. He stood up and stretched and followed Robert. Robert scooped him up and carried him over to the Holden and set him on the passenger seat.
44
Robert woke in the night to the sound of Mary’s voice. He sat up and listened. She wasn’t speaking loudly and sounded calm. He couldn’t catch what she was saying but he knew what it was. He got out of bed and pulled on his pants and went around onto the verandah. Ed had his torch on and was searching for something. He saw Robert and said, ‘All right if I take the Holden?’
Robert said, ‘I’ll get the keys.’ He went back into the bedroom. Lena was sitting up. ‘The baby’s coming,’ Robert said. ‘They’re taking the station wagon.’ He picked up the keys and took them to Ed. Lena got up and put on a dressing-gown. Ed was bundling up their things. Mary giving him instructions. Lena asked Ed if he’d like a cup of tea before heading out.
‘I think we’d better get to Canberra pronto,’ he said. He was grinning. ‘Do I look terrified? Because I am.’
Lena said, ‘You look happy, Ed. Like you should.’ She kissed him on the cheek. When she turned away, Robert saw the twinkle of tears in her eyes. Something clenched inside her had never eased its grip, a fragility in her that cried out for a steadying support. Without him, he could imagine her destroying herself. He longed for the day when she would find her meaning, and wondered if she ever would.
He helped Ed load their stuff into the station wagon and Lena and he hugged them both and wished them good luck. Robert and Lena stood side by side out on the verandah and watched them drive up the road. Ed gave three short blasts on the horn as they went out over the cattle grid. They watched the flash of the Holden’s lights through the forest canopy till they disappeared. The pup hadn’t moved from beside the front door, his eyes blinking up at them. Robert said, ‘We should bring him inside with us.’ Lena said, ‘I think he’s happy out here. If he wants to come in, he’ll make a fuss.’
There was no moon. The forested hills were dark and heavy, encircling them, a touch of rain in the air. They got into bed and lay in the silence side by side, the rain tapping on the tin.
Lena said, ‘I’ll miss him.’ That was all.
45
Rain was coming down steadily. When Robert went outside to take a
piss, a grey mist of cloud and rain was drifting down the valley, obscuring the tops of the hills. They ate their breakfast, the fire going in the hearth. Robert said, ‘Another twenty-four hours and Ed and Mary wouldn’t have got out.’
Lena said, ‘Maybe the baby knew the rain was coming.’
It rained for a week, the creek roaring in the nights. The gullies were running a banker, carrying a fresh wave of rocks and debris across the road. Robert collected firewood in the back of the Rover. He kept the big hearth alight as well as the iron stove.
They heard nothing from Ed and had no way of contacting him.
So the time had come. They were alone and free to live their dreams. Except for the three days in the week when he had to run the mail—Saturday, Wednesday and Friday—each morning after breakfast Robert went into the study and sat at his desk and he wrote the story of himself and Frankie. But it was soon clear to him that this was no longer the story he had written in Sydney. Somehow it had turned into another, more complicated story. Something larger and more demanding in its scope. Something less private. No longer the intimate celebration of friendship, but an idea now; an idea concerning justice and injustice.
He worked in the study each day from breakfast till lunchtime. For the first hour Lena played the piano. He liked to hear her playing. It made him feel more cocooned and alone with his work to know she was out there with her music. He soon discovered, however, that after four or five hours working at his writing in the privacy of his room there was an awkward and irritating mismatch between the demanding realities of the farm and the house and his relations with Lena, and the peculiar illusion of meaning brought on by writing. And when he came out of his study to have his lunch, his writing was reluctant to give way to the everyday needs of the farm. He was irritated at the thought of the chores that were waiting for him—shoeing Ray’s horse and mending the boundary fences and rebuilding the tank stands and gathering firewood. He ate his lunch in silence.
Lena said, ‘When do you think you’ll go up the river and catch the horses Ray told us about? I’d quite like to come with you.’
Robert sat back and pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. ‘You know what I need?’ he said. ‘I need a modest little apartment in the city. St Kilda would do nicely. With a cafe round the corner where I can meet friends and strangers when I finish writing for the day.’ He looked at her and grinned. He didn’t tell her that Ann would be there in the cafe waiting for him and they would go back to his flat together and have wonderful sex.
She got up and went over to the hearth and stood with her back to the warmth of the fire. The rain had eased up half an hour ago. Now it was coming on harder again. She said, ‘I love the sound of the rain on the roof.’
‘Ray says it’s raining money.’
They were both silent a while.
She said, ‘Aren’t you happy?’
‘I was joking. I’m not complaining. I’m fine. It’s just that writing puts me in a funny mood. It takes a while to come down from it, or out of it. When I stop writing for the morning I feel as though I need a reward. Something exciting. Thinking of the chores waiting for me isn’t what I want. It takes a minute or two to adjust.’
She said, ‘Music’s like that.’
They looked at each other. ‘Our two worlds,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fetch the horses when it stops raining, and I’ll do all the other things that need doing.’
‘And I’ll make a lovely vegetable garden for us.’
‘And an orchard?’ he said.
‘We’ll make the orchard together.’ She stood looking at him. ‘I love this place. I feel as if we’re meant to be here.’
Driving along the road on his return run with the mail, his next stop Ray’s place, then the Mallons and last of all the Hemler family, Robert looked down on the cottage. The sun was shining, a drift of smoke from their chimney, Lena bent over in the vegetable garden, Toby lying on his back, belly up, beside her. She stood up when she heard the Rover and turned around and waved to him. He tooted the horn. She was wearing a pale scarf over her hair and from the distance of the road looked like a peasant woman. She might have been down there in that hollow all her life, dutifully scratching a living from the stony soil. The beauty of the setting among the forested hills always moved him to a mixture of joy and sadness. The beauty and the isolation. The solitary figure of Lena working in the garden. It astonished him. Lena Soren, head prefect at the Methodist Ladies’ College, dux of her class in German literature, a concerned social worker, transformed into a peasant girl. Was her struggle for meaning over? Had she found her place here in this remote valley? The confident girl in the smart swimsuit, sophisticated, educated, passionate. It was like a fairy tale in which the princess turns into an old woman of the forest.
Ray was standing at the road gate waiting for him, the Standard grunting and jumping and belching smoke beside him. He was clean-shaven and dressed in his three-piece town suit and was without a hat, his proud head of hair shining in the sun, his new fibro-cement cottage set back from the road behind him, his stock yards in need of repair, the original kitchen of his old place still standing, a small slab hut with its tin chimney, a relic from the valley’s old days, the new growth of wattle trees coming up where he’d once cleared the ground and was now letting it slip back into wilderness again, his youthful energies spent.
Ray greeted Robert. ‘I’m going up to Sydney for a few days to see my nephews. One of them’s getting married again. I’d be glad if you could slip down and feed Tip and make sure there’s water for her and the pups. I’ll leave Beau in the yard for you to put those shoes on him. If you catch them horses of yours, I’ll take you up the river when I get back and you can give us a hand to get the cattle in. You’ll get to know the country. We might need to do a bit of work on these yards first.’
Robert smiled at Ray and wished him a good trip to Sydney. He even added foolishly, ‘There’s no hurry to get back, Ray. Take your time.’ Perhaps he was a fool. But that’s who he was.
Ray said, ‘I’ll call over and see you and Lena when I get back. Old Beau won’t give you any trouble. He’s inclined to lean on you, but he doesn’t kick. He never has kicked out.’
He climbed into the chugging car and drove off. Robert looked after him. ‘There goes a happy man.’
46
On the day, Lena decided not to go with him up the river to look for the horses. She said she wasn’t feeling too good and anyway the weeds were getting ahead of her in the garden and she hadn’t realised, she said, that he would be leaving so early. She came out of the kitchen and stood at the door and watched Robert going through the frost, Toby at his heels. Lena was clutching her dressing-gown around her against the cold morning air. She called after him, ‘I hope you find them.’ He gave a wave as his answer. He had the feeling she was looking forward to being alone and having the place to herself for the day.
He went on over to the barn and picked out a halter and lead rope and he walked down beside the high creek bank to the bottom of the small paddock. He picked up Toby and crossed the creek on a fallen willow, then followed the far bank down to the junction with the river. He stood on the bank of the river and smoked a cigarette. There was a movement in the air here and the mist was drifting off the water, the air clear above, the tops of the casuarinas sticking up like pines. He was admiring the sweep of the river where the creek water flowed in. A deep green hole carved out by the creek when it flooded into the river, a wide sandbank making a perfect beach this side of the hole.
Robert picked his way between the boulders along the steep riverbank for some way then climbed up onto what turned out to be flat, lightly timbered country, the base of the heavily forested hills rising abruptly a kilometre from the river. He walked out onto the flat, a sudden openness and the morning smell of the eucalypts. The day had begun to warm up. There was good sign of cattle having recently been grazing there, but no sign of horses. Toby flushed a rabbit and took off after it with
a yelp of helpless excitement. The air was still and warm and there was the great silence of distant bird calls. He had stopped resenting having forfeited his writing this morning. His mood was lighter now as he began to recover the beauty of being alone in the bush, always that uncanny sense of human absence that made him want to turn around, half expecting to see a figure watching him from among the timber.
Three Hereford cows and their calves were camped in the shade of a stand of black wattle. Over on the edge of the cleared country close to the rise of the hill where the forest began, he saw a stone ruin. He made his way over there to take a look at it. The roof and most of the walls were gone, lying scattered on the surrounding area, the old beams cluttering the inside where the rooms had once been, rooms where people had lived their lives, eating and drinking and sleeping and making love and getting sick and dying. He stepped around among the rubble, looking for whatever was there. The ruin had been scavenged, someone coming here for building materials for their own place. There was that empty silence about it, the hollowness in him of knowing he stepped among the remains of forgotten people. A pack saddle had fallen from a rotted beam. A big old lemon tree shading the place on one side, its branches heavy with lemons, the air rich with the citrus smell of them. Someone had lit a fire not so long ago in the stone hearth. He wondered if it was Ray, out looking for cattle, boiling his lunch billy.
He walked on, leaving the ruin behind. On the far side of the open country the hills closed in again where a deep green cleft led up towards the ridge. The gully had a seep in it and there was fresh horse dung and hoof prints scattered about. Robert said to Toby, ‘They will be up here in the cool.’ He went on in among a glade of ancient wild apple trees. A family of striking yellow-and-black birds were making a fuss, squawking and jumping about in the branches, warning him off. He had never seen these birds before and was curious to know what they were. He stood watching them for some time, Toby beside him looking up at the larrikin birds as if he was thinking they were the reason for walking all this way up the river.