by Alex Miller
It flashed into his head that she was going to share the ledger with Birte.
He said, ‘Martin’s coming up to see us soon.’
She was looking into the fire. ‘I hate to think of Birte being ill. She was always the strong one. Despite what she went through in the war, she was never ill. All through school, I don’t remember her ever taking a day off. No one ever had to substitute for her.’ She turned to him. ‘In six years. It must be a record. I need to reconnect with her properly. I know she’d love to see me. It would cheer her up. Maybe I shouldn’t wait till Martin’s been? What do you think?’
He was thinking of the fierce self-flagellation of her words. ‘I think you should go when you want to.’
She said, ‘You’ll be all right here, won’t you? Ray will come up and see you nearly every day. And you have the mail run. Will you start a new book, do you think?’
‘Not till Martin’s seen this one.’
‘I wish you’d let me read it.’ She picked up the poker and thrust it into the smouldering log, sparks flying up the chimney. She turned to him. ‘I think I will go then. If that’s all right?’
He knew she had already decided to go. He asked her lightly, ‘Do you still believe in this? The farm, I mean? What we’re doing here? Does it still make sense to you?’
‘Of course I believe in it. Don’t be silly. You know I love this place. I love it here! I just need to go and see Birte. Do you understand? I hope you do.’
‘When will you go?’
‘Maybe you could give me a lift to Canberra on Saturday after you’ve done the mail run?’
So there it was. Lena was on the move again.
49
Martin came to stay when the nights in the valley were cold and windless, the sky clear, sounds carrying through the forest with a strange clarity, distant places drawn near by the gleaming prism of the air. Lena had recently returned from visiting Birte in Melbourne. Robert picked Martin up at the airport in Canberra. They stopped in Braidwood to buy supplies and it was late in the afternoon when they drove into the farm, Toby running up the road to greet the Land Rover, racing them down the hill barking. The night chill was already settling, a pale mist drifting in the hollow by the creek, where the casuarinas lay in the deep shadow of the hill to the west.
Lena came out of the house and met them at the garden grid. She and Martin embraced then stood beside each other on the small square of lawn at the side of the house. They were facing the horse paddock and she was describing to him the lay of the land, pointing to where the creek had its junction with the river, the boundary of their land and the beginning of their neighbour’s place, their friend Ray McFadden. Martin was wearing smart Italian sunglasses with a striped business shirt and dark tie. He looked very European. He had taken off his jacket and Robert was holding it for him, along with the small leather suitcase he’d brought. Standing there in the late sunlight beside Lena, Martin seemed to Robert more youthful than he ever had in his home in Melbourne. He stood very straight and alert, his hands on his hips, as if he surveyed a field of active operations that were being described to him, a dilemma confronting him to which he was confident of finding the solution. Robert noticed he was wearing onyx cufflinks, the polished surface of the black stones catching the last of the sun when he moved his hands. Robert was nervous. Martin would ask to read his book. He so longed for, and dreaded, Martin’s verdict that he refused to let himself dwell on it.
Martin turned to Lena and said something to her and she smiled and took his arm. The only concession to being in the country Martin had made in his clothes was to loosen the knot of his tie.
Lena had made up the single bed for him on the back verandah and had placed a wicker chair and a low table under the louvres near the piano. She had made the back verandah look homely.
In the morning after breakfast, while the three of them were still sitting at the table in the kitchen and the fire in the hearth was burning brightly, the old grey box cracking and popping, sparks flying up the chimney, the iron hot, Martin eased back his chair and lit a cigarette.
Martin turned to him. ‘So, tell me, Robert,’ he said. ‘How’s it going with you?’
It was the question Robert most wanted Martin to ask him and most dreaded to hear. Robert said, ‘I’ve finished my novel.’
‘Can I read it?’
‘Now?’ Robert said.
Martin shrugged his shoulders.
Lena reached over and put her hand on Robert’s hand and they looked at each other. Robert got up and went into his study. He picked up the thick wad of typed manuscript and held it a moment before he turned around and went out into the kitchen. Martin was standing by the window above the sink looking up the low hill, the snaking curves of the access road a pale feature of the view. Without turning around he said, ‘It’s very beautiful here.’ He turned and smiled at Robert. ‘I don’t imagine you have so many interruptions.’
‘None at all,’ Robert said.
As Robert handed the manuscript to Martin, a terrible doubt assailed him.
With the manuscript in his hands, Martin turned to Lena. ‘Have you read it?’
She said, ‘You’re its first reader, Martin.’ She stood close beside Robert. They watched Martin walk down the passage to the back verandah. The house was tensely silent for a moment, then they heard the creak of the wicker chair and the metallic snap of Martin’s brass lighter. Lena kissed Robert on the cheek. ‘It’s all right. Do something! Occupy yourself!’
‘Are you going to be here?’
She said, ‘I’m going for a walk to Big Oakey to see if Dom’s beans are ready to pick. He said we should help ourselves.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ he asked.
‘Do you mind if I say no? I love to walk along the road on my own.’
She went out and Robert stood listening. He heard the rustle of a page being set aside. He went out and drove the Land Rover down to the junction to collect firewood. A previous owner of the block had ringbarked twenty or thirty acres of timber there and the ground was littered with the grey carcasses and limbs of long-dead trees. He loaded the back of the Rover and sat on a log and smoked a cigarette and tried not to think. But in his head he could see Martin setting each page aside, slow and careful, his eyes scanning the following page with close attention, bringing his rich intelligence to bear on the words. In this hope-filled scenario Martin was deeply absorbed in a story he greatly admired. In the other version, which was equally insistent, he was coldly disapproving of what he read. The two versions switched back and forth in Robert’s head.
He drove home and stacked the wood out in the paddock near the dunny. He carried an armful in and set it down beside the door under the verandah. He went down the passage to the back verandah. Martin was sitting in the wicker chair, half turned away from the door, a page in his hand, his glasses on his nose, a cigarette held close to his lips in his free hand. Robert said, ‘Would you like some lunch?’ Martin lifted his hand in a gesture that said, please don’t disturb me. Robert went back into the kitchen. He was hungry. Martin called, ‘A cup of tea, Robert, if you’re making tea.’
The day dragged on. Robert took the Land Rover down to the junction again and fetched another load of firewood. Lena was home when he got back. There was washing on the line in the garden and she was reading by the fire. The stove was alight, the kitchen cosy. He went over to the hearth and sat beside her. She smiled. ‘It won’t be long now.’
‘Have you been to see him?’
‘I took him something to eat. Don’t worry. He’s nearly finished.’
‘Did he say anything? I don’t think he’s going to admire it.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course he’ll admire it.’
The cigarette Robert was smoking was making him nauseous. He tossed it into the fire.
Lena set her book aside and stood up. ‘I’d better go and get the washing in.’
Robert felt hollowed out from the tension of waiting all day. He got
up and sat at the table and rested his head on his arms. A few minutes later he heard a board creak in the passage and sat up. Martin came into the kitchen. He was carrying the thick wad of manuscript. He didn’t look at Robert but dumped it heavily on the table beside him, discarding it with evident relief.
Martin met his eyes. He said sadly, ‘Why don’t you write about something you love?’
Robert realised at once that Martin hadn’t given up on him. That was what mattered most. Robert had secretly known all along that there was something dishonest about the book, but had somehow tricked himself into going on with it. Now he could admit that he had been lying to himself. Somehow, and he wasn’t sure how this worked, it had been easy to fool himself. But Martin hadn’t been fooled. Robert hadn’t loved this book, but had tried to impress with it. And Martin had seen this and had no intention of putting up with it. Robert was glad to be rid of the unseemly burden of it. He stood up and went around the table and embraced Martin. ‘Thank you,’ he said with feeling.
Martin looked at him and laughed softly. ‘So why don’t we have a drink?’
The irony, surely, was that he’d written his first, his abandoned, version of Frankie out of love, without really noticing then what he was doing.
The three of them sat by the fire talking and drinking wine until late into the night. There had been some talk earlier between them about friendship and betrayal. Martin told them in a few simple sentences the story of how he was betrayed by his Polish comrade when they were stationed on the western border near the Oder River. The first German armoured assault of the war fell on them and they were overwhelmed and made a run for it, following their retreating officers towards Warsaw. Martin’s Polish comrade saved his life initially only to betray him later to the Nazis as a Jew.
Early the next morning, before Lena and Martin were up, Robert got up and went into his study and wrote Martin’s story out in detail. The scene gripped him, the dark and the shells and the fear and the exhausting run in the ditches at the sides of the fields. He called the story by the ironic title ‘Comrade Pawel’. He wrote it out of love for Martin. He gave Martin the story to read when they were gathered in the kitchen for lunch. Martin stood by the kitchen table and read it. He didn’t sit down. And Robert stood by his side, confident that the older man was going to approve of it. When Martin had finished, he set the last sheet on the table and turned to Robert.
‘You could have been there!’ he said, and he clasped Robert to him. He was moved.
Robert still could not quite believe he had got the details right. How could he have? he asked himself. After all, he had not been there. He said, ‘But the soldiers’ caps, the woollen caps I’ve described—are they right? Is that really how it was? And the trucks pulled up behind the trenches, with the officers drinking?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Martin said, impatient with his doubts. ‘It’s all there.’
It was the first time in his life that Robert had written above himself. Had written, that is, with an assurance beyond the realities of his experience. He had found a direct imaginative link to the story through his love of Martin and his longing for the deepest empathy with his friend. Martin’s story was a gift. Martin had entrusted the story to him and he had made it his own. They were both moved by the outcome of this strange and wonderful exchange. They had been waiting a long time for it.
Late the following evening they were sitting by the hearth. Martin was smoking a cigarette, a glass of red wine on the stool beside his chair. He looked happy and content. Out of one of his long silences earlier he had said, ‘I feel at home here.’ The companionable mood of this statement had remained with them. They had fallen silent, the three of them staring into the fire, the creaking log sending a curl of blue smoke into the chimney cavity, its underside glowing red.
‘Ed, and us three, and Birte,’ Lena said. ‘The five of us, there’s hardly a thing in our histories that’s common to us, and yet we’ve all given each other so much from our love and our friendships.’ She looked at Martin and then at Robert. She seemed to feel she’d asked a question and was hoping to hear an answer.
It occurred to Robert that this was just the kind of thing Birte might have said. He heard Birte’s voice in Lena’s statement. But Birte wouldn’t have left it at that. Birte would have demanded some kind of explanation from them. Robert wasn’t surprised Lena had included Ed among their little group. He said, ‘You make it sound as if it’s nearly over for us.’
She turned to him quickly, alarmed by the suggestion. ‘Do I? No I don’t,’ she objected. ‘Of course it’s not nearly over. We’ve only just begun. Did it sound like that to you, Martin? As if I meant it was nearly over?’
Martin was sitting in what had become known as Ray’s chair. He didn’t say anything for a while. Robert had begun to think he wasn’t going to respond when he leaned forward and tapped his ash onto the stone lintel of the fireplace. ‘Being here has been a new beginning for you both.’ That was all.
A plover screamed its alarm in the horse paddock and was answered by its mate. Toby gave a low woof by the door. The pair of plovers was nesting down there somewhere. Toby was on his mat outside the kitchen door, listening to the night, being on guard. He had disdained the use of the warm kennel Robert had made for him. The ginger cat had adopted it as her new home. Robert got up and gave the log a couple of whacks with the iron poker.
In the morning Martin went with Robert to help him repair the boundary fence which had been washed away by the creek again. Robert gave Martin a shirt and a pair of his old jeans and found a hat for him in the barn. Martin’s feet were small enough for him to wear a pair of Lena’s work boots.
They worked side by side, for much of the day up to their waists in the cold water of the creek. As the day wore on, Martin showed no sign of being fatigued. He used the heavy bar and the fencing spade and the pliers as if he was familiar with them. Robert saw from the first how Martin stood with his weight positioned over the bar, both hands gripping it close to his chest, his head bent, sighting between his feet where the chisel end of the heavy steel would strike the ground to greatest effect. There was nothing clumsy in Martin’s movements. He wasn’t going to strain his back or exhaust himself, as someone new to manual work might have done. The impression of fragility he could sometimes convey was not to do with physical weakness but was more a reflection of his inner world. Martin’s easy familiarity with work tools was something in their pasts they had in common. It made no difference that Martin had grown up in Germany and Robert in England. Martin saw at once what was required down there by the creek among the casuarinas. He strode into the cold water up to his waist, dragging the twisted wire free from the flood debris and later realigning the fence posts on the banks. The two men kept pace with each other and found a rhythm that required no words of instruction. Robert wished Ray had been there to see them. He wanted Ray and Martin to meet. Until Martin came to visit them, there had been nothing to connect Robert’s life as a worker and his life as a writer. Now here it was, unexpectedly with Martin, as if both Martin’s past and his own reached out and met at a point of perfect understanding. Neither man spoke of this. In the middle of the day they took a spell from the work and ate oranges and boiled the billy for a cup of tea and a smoke. Toby came down to visit them. He laid his head in Martin’s lap and Martin stroked his ears and spoke to him softly. Toby blinked and gazed up at him with a look of dog rapture.
Before he went home to Melbourne, Martin said he would return soon and stay for longer next time. Working in the bush alongside Robert, he said, had restored in him an emotion he had thought he was never to feel again. He didn’t say this emotion was optimism, but Robert couldn’t help believing that was what it was. ‘I was seriously hungry for the first time in years,’ Martin said. They promised each other they would do it again soon.
50
Robert couldn’t wait to try his Martin story with a publisher. The day after Martin went home he posted the story to a literary jou
rnal in Melbourne. He didn’t keep a copy and he didn’t include an envelope with a return address but simply wrote a three-line note asking if they would be interested in publishing the story, which he said was true. Three days later he had a phone call from the editor of the journal. The editor asked to speak to Robert’s father. Robert told him he had written the story himself. The editor said, ‘It reads as if it was written by an older man whose first language isn’t English.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Robert said. ‘It’s written in the voice in which I heard the story, the voice of my friend. It isn’t really my story. I only wrote it down.’
In a tone heavy with amused irony, the editor said, ‘Ah, so you only wrote it down? That thing that writers do.’ He said he would like to meet Robert. Robert told him that wasn’t possible as he had a mail run and a farm to look after.
Robert wasn’t surprised that the editor liked the story and wanted to publish it, but he was very pleased. He knew the story was right even before Martin had said he could have been there. The editor said he would send the page proofs in a couple of months. ‘Your story will appear in the first issue in the New Year.’
Robert put the phone back on its hook and went out onto the front verandah. He said aloud, ‘Success is good for your health.’ He stood looking up the hill, Toby beside him, also looking up the hill. Three heifers with their shiny young calves were grazing on the hillside. The sun was shining. A deep wave of happiness was passing slowly through Robert’s belly and up into his chest, easing out the old anxiety and replacing it with a golden softness. He said, ‘So I really can do it.’ He didn’t say, I’m a writer, but that was what he meant. Just write it down. That was all he had to do. The simple truth. Never again attempt to impress. He felt ashamed when he thought of the awful book he had written. He would burn it. He would begin the story of Frankie this time with an account of himself on the farm in England. That was the way it had happened. He had loved those people and their landscape. The almost two years he spent working on the Exmoor farm remained with him, the details sharp in his memory. As the farmer’s boy then he had been at the very bottom of the social ladder. When he arrived on the station in the Gulf he was elevated to a superior rung in the order of things. The bottom, the lowest pay and the least respect, was reserved for Frankie and his mob. Frankie’s notional four pound ten a week and his own very real four pound ten a day had said it all. It was the perfect story of injustice, but it was also a story about people and places he had loved and it would live in his heart for the rest of his life.