by Alex Miller
Robert said, ‘I’ll put some eggs on.’
Ray said, ‘I never did live with a woman.’
‘You stayed sane without a woman.’
Ray chuckled. ‘I don’t know about that.’
Robert got up and broke four eggs into the pan and set it over the plate on the stove.
Three weeks went by and Robert was writing. He heard nothing from Lena. He thought of calling Birte and asking if they’d seen her, but he was afraid it might look to them as though he and Lena were doing a rerun of the Italian escapade. It was evening and he was in his room writing his Exmoor days, riding second horse with the Devon and Somerset Staghounds for old farmer Warren, when the phone rang and made him jump. It was his party line signal, two shorts and a long. Robert went out to the kitchen and picked up the phone. John said, ‘A call for you, Robert. It’s Lena from Melbourne.’ Robert thanked him and waited till he heard John hang up before he said hello; John liked sitting on the line listening in. When Robert heard the click he said, ‘Is it you?’
She said, ‘I’m really sorry! Honestly! I’ve been meaning to call you every day but things have just been really hectic. So much has been happening. You won’t believe it, but I’ve bought a house.’
‘You bought a house?’
She went on, sounding a bit breathless with her news. ‘I put Mum’s place on the market and got a bridging loan from the bank. It’s a romantic old Victorian terrace in South Melbourne. It was a boarding house for single women. The woman who was running it died. There’s still one old woman living downstairs. I’ll let her stay if she wants to. We said hello when I looked at the house. I’ll live upstairs. There’s a bedroom with a balcony at the front that looks out over a park and the railway. There’s a kitchen next to the bedroom and then at the back there’s a lovely bright sunny room with a view over a jumble of backyards. I fell in love with that room the minute I saw it. It seemed to be waiting for me. I’ll use it as my studio. The house is wonderfully dilapidated and a bit smelly. I’m going to leave it just as it is.’ She stopped talking abruptly, as if something had interrupted her.
Robert listened to the hissing on the line.
She said, ‘What do you think? You can come down and see it. Get Ray to water the horses and feed Toby. And maybe he can do the mail run for a couple of days. I told Margaret Hall about us and the farm and she said it sounded enchanting. She’d love to come up and stay for a while and she and I can go out on drawing expeditions together. How has your writing been going?’ Before he could tell her how excited he was about his book she continued. ‘You were right about calling my pieces The Doll Suite. That’s what Pam called them too. She was enthusiastic about them. It made them seem important. As if I didn’t do them but someone far more interesting than I am did them. She made them seem mysterious and intriguing. They made me welcome. All of them. It was wonderful. I felt as if I’d arrived home at last. I’ve enrolled as a full-time student. Am I crazy? Tell me the truth. I just love it there. The whole atmosphere. They don’t care about anything but their drawing.’
Robert had never heard her being so positive and enthusiastic about anything before. ‘Of course you’re crazy,’ he said.
‘I feel like I’m one of them. Honestly! They understand. They don’t talk about understanding, but I know they just do. They accept me. They make me feel serious about what I’m doing.’
‘You sound as if you’re in love,’ he said. And he did feel a bit jealous, a bit empty and alone and even abandoned.
‘You’re right. I am in love. I’m in love with my new life. It’s everything I’ve dreamed.’ She fell silent. He heard a train going by in the background and thought of the city, Melbourne, the dense activity. She said in a thoughtful voice, ‘Why has it taken me so long?’
54
Once Robert was living alone on the farm, Ray came up to see him more often. Scarcely more than a couple of days went by between his visits. He called in the afternoon or early evening and they sat by the hearth and drank tea together and talked. Ray was respectful of Robert’s ambition to be a novelist but was not able to take it seriously, so Robert did not talk to him about it. The farm, rain and the growth of feed, these were what concerned Ray, and the old days. The condition of his herd of breeders and their calves and the price of vealers when he came to sell the annual crop, that was Ray’s familiar territory.
Robert thought he was looking older this evening. Ray hadn’t bothered to shave and the grey stubble on his cheeks made his craggy features seem shadowed and caved in. He had declined to stay for dinner but had hung on anyway, the evening getting later and later. He sat dreaming and gazing into the fire, fallen into a long silence. Robert was very glad of his company, but he was also hungry and wanting his dinner. He saw in Ray the last of the old bushmen of the kind he had met when he first arrived in Australia. Modest and decent men who often lived alone and took for granted the need of a neighbour’s help or giving help wherever it was needed without being asked. Robert was comfortable and relaxed in Ray’s company. He understood and respected the values of the man. And while Ray dreamed in front of the fire, Robert thought of the hunt for the Haddon stag across the bogs and clefts of the moor. He was writing this book from love and it was giving him a deep and sound feeling of satisfaction. Martin was coming up to the valley for a visit again soon. He was looking forward to getting his two friends together at last.
Ray roused himself and took the dead butt of the cigarette from between his lips and examined it. He said, ‘I’ll get you to give us a hand to bring in that old piker bullock in the morning, if you haven’t got anything on, Robert.’ He sat forward and eased himself up out of the chair. ‘These chairs of yours swallow a man. I’d better get home and get some dinner on.’
Robert said, ‘You are very welcome to stay and have a feed here, Ray. I’ve got plenty in that fridge.’
‘I need to get home.’ Ray looked around for his hat and put it on his head. ‘We’ll leave early if that suits you.’ He warmed his back in front of the fire. ‘You hear from Lena lately?’
‘Oh yes, she always asks how you’re going and sends her love.’
‘And you send my love back to her too.’
‘I always do.’
They went out and Robert stood by the verandah, Toby looking on, while Ray climbed into the Vanguard, the driver’s side door giving out a squeal. He slammed the door and started the motor with a roar that woke elaborate echoes around the hills. Robert stood watching the Vanguard’s headlights bouncing up the road. The next day was a Tuesday, a non-mail-run day. He had been looking forward to getting on with the story of the hunt.
55
It was grey light when Robert got out of bed and went out into the kitchen and lit the stove. He made a cup of tea and fed Toby and ate two fried eggs on toast. He put on his old leather leggings over his moleskins and he sat to pull on his riding boots. He put on his sheepskin jacket and the hat he’d scavenged from the barn soon after he and Lena arrived there and were still exploring the treasures of the barn. The sun wasn’t up over the hill yet when he left the house. A low drift of white mist hanging between the orange trees and the barn, birds calling to each other in the timber. He fetched a scoop of milled oats and the bridle from the barn and walked over to the horse paddock gate. He didn’t need to call the creamy. She whinnied and trotted up to the gate, eager for the oats. The old brown gelding and the filly standing off in the mist watching, knowing these early-morning rituals were none of their business. Robert rolled a smoke and lit it while he watched the creamy lipping her oats. When she was done he slipped the bridle over her ears and led her to the barn and saddled her.
He got up and let her step off and they rode over to the horse paddock and he leaned down and unlatched the gate. She didn’t like this manoeuvre and he gave her time to deal with it. Inside the paddock he wheeled her around and she stood nervously to let him latch the gate. The old gelding watching them, the filly arching her neck and kicking up, then gi
ving them the benefit of a stiff Spanish canter along the fence line. The filly’s feet were hard and in good order and he’d never shod her.
As he rode out into the fine morning Robert was thinking to himself, So here I am, back where I was, sitting on a horse looking for wild cattle. He was resenting it and was thinking maybe he should be more selfish and just plain mean enough to tell Ray he was too busy writing to take the morning off. But here he was doing it. He turned at the far fence and whistled to Toby. The dog came out around the house and stood looking. He was still mourning the loss of Lena. After she left he seemed to have decided he wasn’t Robert’s dog.
Robert rode down the broken silt bank into the river. The water up to the mare’s belly. He kept a loose rein, letting her feel her way nervously over the river stones, stepping daintily. She was sure-footed and had never stumbled with him. He left her alone to get on with it.
They rode up out of the water onto the grassy bank and went on in among a regrowth of black wattle, where Ray had once cleared the big trees off his country, the country reclaiming its natural state now he no longer attended to it. Six cows and three calves were camped among the stand of wattle. They stood up ahead of the creamy and stretched. Robert did a bit of a detour around them. The sun came up over the hill as he came out of the wattle onto the extensive river flats above Ray’s place, the country bright and golden around him. Robert had forgotten to resent the interruption to his writing. He was at home on the horse and was doing the only work he had ever respected.
A quarter-hour later they came up to Ray’s place, a low pit-sawn kitchen with a tin roof and tin chimney piece. No sign of smoke from the chimney. Beside the slab kitchen was a new fibro-cement two-man quarters. Robert stepped down at the yards. He opened the big gate on the main yard and propped it with a rock Ray left there for that purpose. If they were to bring the old roan piker down the river later with a bunch of coachers he wanted the way into the yards to be clear for them. He hitched the creamy to a rail. He was surprised then to see Ray’s horse standing in the long paddock beyond the house watching him. He had expected Ray to be saddled up by now and waiting for him.
He walked over to the kitchen and ducked under the rail Ray had nailed across the gap between the kitchen and fibro quarters to keep the stock out. Robert called a greeting and stepped into the dark interior of the kitchen. The hearth was cold. A plate of half-eaten steak and sausages on the table and a half loaf of bread. Robert called again but got no reply. He was concerned now. He came out of the kitchen and stepped across to the fibro quarters. Ray was lying on the floor beside his bed. His old sweat-stained nightshirt ridden up around his skinny thighs, a powerful stench of vomit and shit.
Ray said, ‘Give us a hand up, will you.’
Robert kneeled down beside him and pulled his shirt down. His bowels had let go and he had vomited. The vomit was congealed. ‘Have you been lying here all night, Ray?’ Robert got his hands under Ray’s shoulders and lifted him into his arms and hauled him sideways onto the bed. Then he lifted Ray’s legs and set them on the bed with him, as if they were separate things that had come adrift.
He said, ‘How long have you been down?’
Ray gave Robert a faint smile and reached for his hand. He held Robert’s hand and closed his eyes, his breathing shallow, his mouth gaping. He looked like a broken shell of the man Robert knew, his teeth blackened and worn down like the teeth of an old horse. He was caved in and drained of his beautiful spirit. Robert said, ‘Ray, old mate, I’m going to call for the ambulance. Are you having any pain?’
‘Get me a drink of water, Robert,’ Ray said. ‘I think I’ve had a stroke.’ He seemed to revive a bit. ‘I always thought my heart would give out like it did on old David Andrews and I’d fall from the saddle the way he did. Dead as mutton.’ He gave a hoarse laugh and coughed, a sudden violent cough that he was unable to break, lunging forward and drawing breath, a high-pitched whistling in his windpipe. Robert went over to the kitchen and fetched a cup of water and he propped Ray up and held him while he took a drink. He went back into the kitchen and rang John at the exchange and asked him to send an ambulance as quick as he could. ‘Ray’s had some kind of a collapse. He might have had a stroke.’
Robert fetched a bucket and a cloth from the kitchen. He filled the bucket with water from the tank and went into Ray’s bedroom. He took off his sheepskin and hung it behind the door and he set to cleaning up the vomit and the shit. When he had done he asked Ray, ‘Where do I find a clean nightshirt for you?’
Ray did not respond for a long time. Then he opened his eyes and stared into Robert’s eyes. ‘Promise me you’ll get that old piker bullock, Robert.’
‘I’ll get him,’ Robert said. ‘Don’t you worry about it. The creamy and me will have him in the yard before lunch.’
The ambulance took him away. They came up from Moruya on the coast and not down the mountain from Braidwood. Robert drove up to Araluen and told the woman at the pub, but she already knew all about it from John at the exchange. She had called Ray’s nephew and he was coming down to the Moruya hospital from Sydney.
Robert heard no more for a couple of weeks. Then one afternoon he had a call from the nephew. The nephew said Ray had a brain tumour and lung cancer and they were operating on him. ‘I promised him I’d bring him down to see you as soon as he’s back on his feet. He wants to know if you got the roan bullock.’
Robert said he hadn’t got the bullock. ‘I will be going out to look for him as soon as I can make the time,’ he said.
The nephew said, ‘I’ll tell Ray you got him. It will cheer him up.’
Robert said, ‘Ray will know you are lying.’
The nephew said, ‘Leave it to me.’
Robert said, ‘I would not like Ray to think I had lied to him about something.’
The nephew said again, ‘Leave it to me.’
A couple of weeks later they turned up in a smart new Holden Statesman. The car came bounding down the road one afternoon, its dark purple iridescent paintwork gleaming in the sunlight. It pulled up by the garden grid. Robert went over to them. Ray and a man of around forty got out of the car. Ray’s head was shaved. He had lost his lion’s mane. He looked a hundred. Robert choked inside to see him.
Ray shook his hand and said, ‘You get that old piker yet, mate?’
Robert looked at the nephew. He shook his head slightly.
Robert said, ‘No, Ray, I didn’t. But I will get him.’
‘I know you will,’ Ray said. ‘I know that.’
Robert never saw him again. Ray died a few weeks later in a Sydney hospital. Robert didn’t hear of his death until after the funeral. The nephew rang and told him. He said, ‘I’d like you to take care of Ray’s place, Robert. We’ve decided to keep it going for the time being.’
Robert said, ‘I am already doing that.’
The nephew said, ‘We need to make it official.’ He said they would offer Robert a payment. Robert told him he would not take a payment for it.
Lena wept when he called to tell her. Robert didn’t weep, but he felt a sense of great loss. He sat by the fire and drank a few glasses of red wine and smoked a cigarette and gazed into the red coals and talked to Ray as if Ray was there with him. One thing he said was, ‘The lower valley died with you, Ray.’ That was the way it felt. An end to the old values and the old ways. Who, after all, was to persist with those old ways now? Those values had died with Ray McFadden. Robert knew it.
He went on playing his part, bringing Ray’s cattle in for marking and bringing his own in, but after Ray was gone there was an emptiness about it. The meaning of it was lost. The meaning of his days centred more and more for Robert at his desk in the morning and the reliving of his story of Exmoor. He wasn’t inventing the story, but was remembering it, rekindling its intimate moments in himself. He even kept the real names of the people. He could not bring himself to invent new names for Morris and farmer Warren and the great hunters and those people among whom he had
found a place for a time.
But he could not work on the book twenty-four hours of the day and the silence of the long hours and the endless nights when he was not writing was oppressive. The one great moment he looked forward to was when Martin was to come to stay with him. Robert was hoping to have the Exmoor book finished by the time Martin arrived. He knew this Exmoor story was just as authentic as the ‘Comrade Pawel’ story, and he was eager for Martin to read it.
But things never seem to happen on their own. There is always a series of things that happen around the same time. As if some kind of vortex develops, tripping some kind of trigger and speeding up the passage of time. First Lena left and found a purpose for herself, a life with her artist friends that had taken on a deep and satisfying meaning for her; then Ray died, the man who had welcomed them to the valley and had become Robert’s close friend. When Martin’s letter came Robert kept it unopened till the evening. He kept it till after his evening meal, when he had a fire going in the big hearth. Then he sat down with a cup of tea and a cigarette and he took a knife and slit the envelope and slid the two pages out and unfolded them.
My dear Robert,
I have had news that I long ago despaired of ever hearing. Out of the blue I have received a letter from my sister’s son in Israel. I had no idea anyone else from my family had survived. His name is Richard and he is a doctor and lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and their three children. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to discover that I have a family. This news has come like a sudden new spring into my life. I am going to Israel to stay with Richard and his family for a while. As this will almost certainly be my last and only visit to Israel, I have decided to spend a year with them. So I’m afraid I will have to postpone my next visit to you.