by Nevil Shute
Her eyes moistened a little. “Oh, Carl! Do you do that?”
He nodded. “It is a stupid thing, but that is what I do. In nine months now I shall be out of the camp life, out of it for ever, a free man.”
“When were you a free man last, Carl?” she asked. “When did you last live a normal life, with a home?”
“In 1938,” he said. “I lived then at my father’s house, just after I became a doctor. Then came the Germans, and I joined the army.”
“It’s a terribly long time,” she said softly. And then she looked up at him, and smiled, and said, “Were you ever married?”
He smiled back at her. “No,” he said. “I was never married. I was spared that complication.”
She said quietly, “You must have been very lonely, all those years.”
“I do not think so, not in the war years,” he said. “So much was happening, so much of grief and work and pain, I think that one had no time to be lonely. After the war, in the camps, in Germany,” he shrugged his shoulders, “perhaps one had got out of the habit of being lonely. Perhaps in Germany, where life was very hard, there was so little happiness in married life that one did not want it. I do not know. It is only in the last year, since I came here to Australia and I have seen men living happily with wives and with their children, and with no war in the country — it is only since the last year I have been a little lonely in the evenings sometimes.”
She said, “So then you go out and catch a fish.”
He laughed. “Yes, then I go out and catch a fish.” He got to his feet and began to put the remains of their lunch together. “Now we must go down to Woods Point and catch Mary Nolan.”
They got back into the utility and ran down the long road into the valley before them. Woods Point proved to be a little town of wooden houses at the bottom of a valley, rather a straggling little town that had been wiped out from time to time with forest fires and so was built of fairly modern houses; these houses stood about amongst the trees around two working gold mines. There was not very much of it, a hotel, a bakery, a store or two strung haphazard along the main street; there seemed to be no reason why anyone should live there but for the gold mines.
Carl Zlinter stopped the Chev at the hotel and went in to ask where old Mrs. Williams lived. He came out presently and got back into the car. “It is just a little way,” he said. “We must turn round.”
Jennifer said, “You’ve had a beer.”
“I have found where Mary Nolan, Mrs. Williams lives,” he said. “It is not right for you to say such things.”
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“It is a part of the woman’s burden in this country,” he remarked, “that they are not allowed in the bar.”
They left the utility by the roadside three hundred yards back and walked down a grassy lane, asked at a house, and were directed to the right one. A middle-aged, sandy-haired woman came to the door. Carl Zlinter asked, “Does Mrs. Williams live here, please?”
She looked at him with interest at his accent. “That’s right,” she said. “Auntie lives here with us.”
“Would it be possible if we should have a talk with her a little?” he asked. “My name is Carl Zlinter, and this is Miss Morton.”
To Jennifer the woman said, “How d’you do? I’m Elsie Stevens — Mrs. Stevens. What d’you want to talk to Auntie about? She’s pretty old, you know, and she don’t have to do much talking to get tired.”
Jennifer said, “We’ve come over from Leonora station, out past Banbury. Mr. Zlinter works in the timber at Lamirra. He’s trying to find out about a relation of his who was in the Howqua in the old days.”
“Leonora?” The woman wrinkled her brows. “Would that be Jack Dorman’s place?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, I know.” With contact established she became more friendly. “Did you say it was about the old days in the Howqua?”
“That is right,” the Czech said. “There was a man there of the same name as me, who died and was drowned and buried there; I have seen the stone at the grave with his name carved upon it. It is the same name as my own, Charlie Zlinter. I was told that your aunt was living in the Howqua at that time, and I have thought that she could tell me about him, who he was and where he lived.”
The woman stood in silence for a minute. “Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said at last. “Auntie was in the Howqua for a bit before she came here, but she wouldn’t remember anything about that now.”
Jennifer said, “Could we have a talk with her, do you think? Just for a few minutes? We don’t want to tire her.”
The woman said slowly, “Well, I don’t mind asking her. What did you say the name was?”
“Charlie Zlinter.”
The woman stood staring at him for a moment, while the elusive memory of a local jingle scattered through her mind. “I’ve heard that name before ...” She paused. “Some rhyme about a dog?”
“That’s right,” said Jennifer.
“Charlie Zlinter and his heeler hound
Fell into the Howqua and unhappily drowned ...”
“That’s right,” the woman said. “We used to say that when we was children, at the Sunday school. Just wait here a minute, and I’ll ask Auntie.” She turned to Zlinter. “Did you say your name was Charlie Zlinter?”
“That’s right.”
“Like in the rhyme?”
“That’s right. I am called Charlie Zlinter.”
“Well, isn’t that funny? Just wait here a minute, and I’ll tell Auntie.”
She went indoors, and they stood in the lane, waiting. Presently she came out again to them. “Auntie wants to see you,” she said. She hesitated. “You mustn’t mind her if she talks a bit queer. And I wouldn’t stay very long.”
They went into the living-room of the house. A very old woman was sitting in a chair before the fireplace with a shawl round her shoulders; she wore rather shabby black clothes. Her features were lean and long, and she was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles; her white hair was parted in the middle and done in a bun behind her head; there was still plenty of it. Her niece said to her, “These are the people come to see you, Auntie. This is Charlie Zlinter.”
The old woman raised her head and looked at them. “He is not,” she said, and there was still a touch of the Irish in her voice. “He’s nothing like Charlie Zlinter.”
The Czech said, “My name, it is Charlie Zlinter like the man who lived in the Howqua and was drowned there, with his dog.” She turned towards him, and fixed him with her eyes. “I do not know if he was a relation of me or not.”
She said, “You talk like him. Where do you come from, the same place as he did?”
“That is right,” he said. “I come from the same town in Bohemia.”
“Who’s this?” she asked, indicating Jennifer. “Your wife?”
“No,” he said. “Just a friend.”
She snorted a little, as if in disbelief. “I wouldn’t know anything about Charlie Zlinter, no more than any of the other men,” she said. “He got drowned. That’s all I know.”
Carl Zlinter said, “I am trying to find out if he left any papers or books, or any letters from his family in Pilsen, or anything to tell us who he was. I think you are the only person in this district who was living in the Howqua at that time, and I have wondered if you could tell us anything, if you remember.”
The old woman said testily, “I knew nothing about that man, or any other of those men. Why should I know anything about his papers? There was a man there with that name; that’s all I know about it.”
“Do you remember what happened after he was drowned, perhaps?” the Czech asked. “Do you remember what happened to the things that were in his house? Who took them?”
The old woman made a gesture of irritation. “Sure, how would I be knowing that, after all these years?” she said. “There was many a man went away or died or was away out of it for one reason or another, and there was no keeping track of the
m all, if a body had wanted to. If a body had wanted to,” she repeated.
Carl Zlinter asked, “Can you remember where he lived? Would you know where he had his house?”
“I tell you, I know nothing about the man at all,” the old woman said angrily. “He was drunk and he got drowned, that’s all I know. How would I be knowing where he lived, or what happened to his gear? I was a decent girl.” She stared at them fiercely.
“There, Auntie, there,” said her niece. “He didn’t mean nothing. He just wants to know if you remember anything about this man.”
The old woman sank back into her chair. “I don’t know nothing about Charlie Zlinter,” she said sullenly.
There was an awkward silence. Jennifer looked up at Carl Zlinter and he nodded slightly; it was developing as they had thought. He said, “I am so sorry — when I heard that you had been in Howqua at that time I thought perhaps you might remember something.” He moved towards the door. “I have now to take my utility to the garage before we start back; we have burst a tyre. May I leave Miss Morton here for half an hour till I have had that repaired?”
Mrs. Stevens said, “Oh, that’ll be right. I was just going to give Auntie a cup of tea. You’ll have a cup of tea with us while you’re waiting, Miss?”
“Jenny’s the name,” the girl said. “I’d love a cup. Can I do anything?” Carl Zlinter slid out of the door behind her.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” She bent to the old woman. “You’d like a cup of tea, Auntie?” she asked, rather loudly. “Jenny’s going to have a cup of tea with us — I’m just going to put the kettle on.”
“I could drink a cup of tea,” the old lady said. Her niece disappeared into the next room, and Jennifer squatted down on a stool before her. “I went over to the Howqua last week,” she said. “There’s nothing left there now, only the gum trees.”
“You went into the Howqua?”
The girl nodded. “We drove the utility up to the top of the ridge, and then walked the last two miles down into the valley.”
“Eh, you’d never drive down that track in a motor-car. I heard of one man tried it once, but they had to get a team to pull him out again. Bullocks they used to use when I was there, eight bullocks to a wagon, in and out of Banbury. That was before the days of motor-cars.” She peered about her. “What’s happened to that man who was here just now, the foreigner?”
“He’s gone to take the car to the garage,” Jennifer said. “We had a flat tyre coming here; we had to change the wheel. He’s gone to get it mended before we start back.”
There was a long silence. The old woman sat staring at the paper flowers in the fireplace, in red and silver tinsel. “What did he say his name was?”
“Charlie Zlinter,” the girl said. “It’s just a coincidence, I think; he’s got the same name as a man who used to work in the Howqua.”
The old woman shook her head. “He never worked in the Howqua. He was a bullocky; used to drive a bullock team between Banbury and the Howqua.” She paused for a while. “He talked like this fellow. Foreign, he was.”
There was another long silence; from the next room Jennifer could hear the rattling of cups. “You’re a pretty girl,” the old woman said at last. “Too pretty for the likes of him. Not getting up to any mischief with him, are you?”
The girl said, “No,” and smiled, colouring a little.
“Well, mind you don’t. Don’t you let him do nothing till he’s married you. These bullock drivers, and the miners too, they’ll say anything, and then in the end you find they’re married already with a wife and three children out behind some place, and you to have a fourth.”
Mrs. Stevens came back with the tea and saved Jennifer from the necessity of answering that one. When the old lady was sipping her cup the girl brought her gently back to the subject by asking, “Did the Charlie Zlinter that you knew look like this one?”
“Ah, Charlie Zlinter was a fine, upstanding man,” she replied, “twice the man of this one. He was a great strong man with black curly hair, strong enough to break the neck of an ox, and he with his bare hands alone. Broader in the shoulders he was, than this man of yours, and a champion at anything that he’d be setting his hand to. A grand, powerful man.” She sat sipping her tea and staring at the tinsel flowers, lost in memories. “There was a slab of stone before the fireplace in his cabin,” she said, “the way the ashes would be kept back in the fire. A slab as big as that ... four hundredweight, he said it weighed. I’ve seen him lift that slab with his two hands, and carry it away. Sure, there wasn’t a man in Howqua could have done the like of that. Anvils, barrels of beer, loads no two men could carry, he’d just lift them down from off the wagon to where they had to be, and he whistling a tune and thinking nothing of it.”
“It must have been a terrible loss when he got drowned,” the girl said.
“Ah,” said the old woman, “it was a sad, sad day, and Howqua was never the same after. The mine closed down, and folks began to drift away, because with the mine shut and the gold finished there was nothing left to stay for. By the time I went out there was every other cabin in the place empty, and folks just walking in and out picking over stuff that had been left behind for that it wasn’t worth the charge to take it out to Banbury upon the wagons. It’s a sad, desolate thing to see houses left that way, and nobody to live in them. I did hear that the whole of Howqua came to be like that, with nobody to walk along the streets but wallabies and rabbits. That was before the fire came through the valley.”
“Which cabin did Charlie Zlinter live in?” the girl asked.
“No. 15, Buller Street,” the old woman said. “It was just the one room with a fireplace and a bed, and a bench where he’d sit working at the bullock harness, sewing with a palm upon his hand like a sailor. He was a sailor one time, so he told me; that’s how he came to be in Australia. He jumped his ship, and came up to the gold-fields, but he found that he could make more money with the wagon.”
“Did he make much money?”
“My word, the bullockies made money,” the old woman said, “more than the miners or prospectors ever did. Everything that came to Howqua had to pass through their hands, and they charged terrible for bringing it. But they were generous as well, ah, Charlie Zlinter was an open-handed man, a kind, generous man. Many’s the thing he used to bring me from the town — a new saucepan from England, or an alarm clock from America, or maybe a length of dress material if it was Christmas — anything he’d see that would take his fancy he’d bring out of town for me, as a surprise, for that I’d never be thinking. Ah, he was a grand kind man.”
“You must have been great friends,” the girl said.
“Better than we should have been, maybe,” Mary Nolan said quietly. “But there, it didn’t seem to be no harm at the time, and now it’s a long while ago.”
There was a silence after she said that. Jennifer sat at her feet hoping that Carl Zlinter wouldn’t come back and break the spell; she felt now that she could ask this old woman anything. She said presently, “Did anybody live in Charlie Zlinter’s cabin after he died?”
The old head shook. “There was people leaving Howqua every day from that time on. Nobody lived in it before I left. There were houses to spare, the way you’d see doors open all along the street.”
“You’re sure of that, are you — that no one lived in it?”
“Nobody lived in it before I went,” she said. “I would have known about it if they had.”
“What happened to all his things? I mean, what did happen in the Howqua when a man died like that? Did the police take them?”
Mary Nolan set her cup down. “There was a policeman, Mike Lynch was his name, from County Kerry; he lodged about the middle of Jubilee Parade, but I’m not sure if he was there. I don’t think there was anything in the cabin to trouble with. Early in the morning, the day that he was found in the river, I went to his cabin in Buller Street, because he was back from Banbury. I knew that because I heard him in the dark night sing
ing outside the hotel that Peter Slim kept, and I knew that he was having drink taken. And I thought maybe he’d have fallen asleep in his clothes or done himself an injury in the cabin, and so I went out and went to his cabin on the far side of the water before it was light, the way the neighbours wouldn’t see me go. I had done that before sometimes, and cleaned him up and made him breakfast, and taken his clothes home to wash, very early in the morning, so nobody would know. But Glory be to God, the man was dead already and I crossed the bridge that he had fallen from, and never knew.”
Jennifer said, “Did he leave any papers or books in the cabin, Mrs. Williams? Can you remember anything like that?”
“Never a book,” she said. “There wouldn’t have been many books in Howqua at that time. Charlie was no scholar, but he could read labels and that — not the longer words. He did have papers of some sort with him, although he never showed me. He kept them all locked up in a tin box he called his ditty box, not very big.”
The girl asked, “What happened to the box after he was dead? Can you remember that?”
“It wasn’t there,” said Mary Nolan. “I remember looking for it special when I found he wasn’t in the cabin, and his door left open, because I knew he set store by it. Sometimes it stood on a little kind of ledge he’d made in the earth chimney, and other times it wouldn’t be there at all. So when I went into the cabin I looked, but the box was away out of it, and then I looked around a little but I didn’t see it. I didn’t give much heed to it, because it wasn’t always there. I wouldn’t know what happened to that at all.”
“Could he have left it in Banbury?”
“He might. I wouldn’t know at all. It could be that he had it with him when he fell into the river.”
“He had the dog in his arms,” said Jennifer. “He wouldn’t have gone to cross the river with the dog and the box too, would he?”
“He was a wild, reckless boy when he had drink taken,” Mary Nolan said. “But there, he had a way with him and a body could deny him nothing. I would not say anything of what he might have done when he had drink taken.”