by Nevil Shute
“What would have happened to the rest of his things?” the girl asked. “Who looked after those?”
“Sure, and there wasn’t very much,” the old lady said. “He was buried in his Sunday suit, they told me. I never went near, because there had been tongues wagging in the Howqua about him and me, and I knew that if any of the women spoke against me I would have flown out at them, and that I would not do at Charlie’s burying. So I stayed in my own cabin all the while, but they told me he was buried in his Sunday clothes. There would have been some working clothes, maybe, but nothing of value, and his wagon and the bullocks. There was a Scots boy worked for him, Jock Robertson; I think he took the wagon and the team. When the working clothes and the harness were gone from the cabin there wouldn’t have been much left, and what there was nobody would want, for all the folks were starting to leave about that time.” She stared at the tinsel flowers in the grate. “I looked into the cabin once, and the bedclothes were still upon the bed, but a possum or a rat had nested there, and the bucket still half full of water, and a loaf of bread still in the cupboard, all gone green with mould.” She shivered a little, and drew the shawl more closely round her. “It’s not good to go back afterwards to places where there has been happiness,” she said. “It tears at your heart. I never went back again, and soon after that I left the Howqua myself. I’d say the cabin stayed like that until the fire came through.”
The girl took one of the old hands and held it in her own. “You must have loved him very much,” she said.
“Whisht,” said the old woman, “there’s a word that you must never use until there’s marrying between you, and Charlie Zlinter was a married man already in his own country. He was a kind, gracious man and I looked after him when he would let me; that’s all there was between us, child. This foreigner that brought you here today and has the same name, is he a married man?”
“No,” said Jennifer. “I asked him that.”
“Maybe you’ll be luckier than I was,” Mary Nolan said. “Maybe he’s telling you the truth of it. The other Charlie Zlinter never told me any lies.”
They sat in silence for a time. The old woman was tiring, and it was evidently nearly time to go. “One last question,” Jennifer said. “Did Charlie Zlinter ever tell you anything about his wife — the wife he had in his own country?”
Mary Nolan shook her head. “He wouldn’t be after telling me the like of that.”
The girl stayed ten minutes longer for politeness; then she said that she would have to go and see how Zlinter was getting on with the car, or they would be late in getting home. She said good-bye to the old woman; Elsie Stevens stepped outside the door with her.
“She had a nice talk with you,” she said. “I haven’t seen her so bright for a long time.”
“I hope I haven’t made her too tired,” the girl said.
“Oh, no. I think it does old people good to have a talk about old times, now and then. It comes easy to them. Did she tell you what you wanted to know?”
Jennifer shook her head. “She couldn’t tell us anything very much — except where he lived. She did tell us that. But she didn’t know anything about him, really.”
“Ah, well, it isn’t easy after all these years.”
She said good-bye to Mrs. Stevens and walked up the lane to the utility; Carl Zlinter was sitting there in it, smoking. “She got talking when you went away, Carl,” she said. “She told me a lot of things, but I don’t know that any of it’s much good to you.”
“Shall we drive out of town, and then stop, and you can tell me what she said?”
“Let’s do that. Let’s go back and stop somewhere by that river, and I’ll tell you all I can remember.”
They drove back over the col where they had lunched, and down to Gaffney’s Creek and to the Goulburn River; presently they parked the car at a place where the river ran near the road, and walked across a strip of pasture to a bend. As they went she told him all about it. “She didn’t know much really that you didn’t know already, Carl,” she said. “There were papers in a box, a tin box, but she doesn’t know what happened to that, or what was in it.” She told him what she had heard from the old woman. “She did look for it particularly that morning, but it wasn’t there.”
“She didn’t know of any other place he might have put it?”
The girl shook her head. “She thought he might have had it with him when he fell into the river — in that case, it’ld be at the bottom of the Howqua.” They walked on for a few steps in silence. “She was so sweet,” Jennifer said quietly, “the way she went out very early to the cabin to find where he was and clean him up. She said she often did that.”
“She must have been very much in love with him, to do that for a drunken man.”
“I think she was,” the girl said. “Yes, I think she was.”
They came to the rocky edge of the river and sat down on a boulder in the shade to watch the water and to talk. The water made a little lilting noise from the run at the end of the pool, a cockatoo screeched now and then in the distance, and the air was fragrant with the clean scent of the gum trees in the summer sun. “She said he lived at Number Fifteen, Buller Street,” Jennifer told him. “Is that enough to tell you where the cabin was?”
He took a folded paper from his breast pocket, and began to spread it out. “What’s that?” she asked.
“It is the township plan that I copied in the Shire Hall,” he said. He stood up, and spread it on the flat boulder that they had been sitting on; she helped him to hold the corners down. The paper was dazzling in the bright sun. He moved his finger down the plan. “Here is Buller Street,” he said. “Here is Fifteen, the number on the block. I think perhaps this was the place.”
She bent to look at the faint pencil lines with him, her head very close to his own. Her hair brushed his cheek and he could smell the fragrance of her skin. “This is Fifteen,” he said, a little unsteadily. “The cabin must have been on this allotment.”
“Could you find the actual place on the ground from this map, Carl? Is there anything left there now to show, that’s marked upon this map?” She stood up, and moved a little away from him; it was difficult for her, also, to be quite so close.
“I think that we could find the place from this,” he said. “Here, this solid marking, this must be the Buller Arms Hotel, and that still shows upon the ground a little. This map is to the scale of two chains to each inch. Perhaps there are other markings left, that Billy Slim will know. I think it will be possible to measure out upon the ground, and find this Block Fifteen in Buller Street.”
“When are you going to do that?”
“I would like to do it tomorrow,” he said. “Would you come with me once more to the Howqua tomorrow?”
She looked at him with laughing eyes. “I don’t know what the Dormans’ll think if I keep going out with you like this, Carl.”
He smiled back at her. “Does that matter very much? You will be going to Melbourne very soon to start your work, and then we shall not go out any more, and the Dormans will be happy.”
“I know.” Mary Nolan had told her that the other Charlie Zlinter had a way with him, and a body could deny him nothing. Perhaps these Charlie Zlinters were all the same. “Of course I’ll come with you, Charlie,” she said, unthinking.
He laughed, and met her eyes, still laughing. “I am not Charlie Zlinter,” he said. “I am Carl, and you are not Mary Nolan. That was fifty years ago. We are much more respectable people than that.”
She laughed with him, flushing a little. “I don’t know why I said that. I’ve been talking about Charlie Zlinter all the afternoon, I suppose.”
“I do not think it is a compliment,” he said. “Charlie Zlinter was a very bad, drunken man, and he was a bullock driver.”
She looked up and met his eyes, still teasing her a little. “Well, what about you?” she asked. “You’re a very bad man, and a lumberman. I don’t see much difference.”
“I am offen
ded,” he announced. “A bullock driver is much lower in the social scale than a lumberman. I would not say that you were like to Mary Nolan. I would not be so rude.”
“I hope you wouldn’t.”
There was a pause; he looked from her across at the little rapids of the river, at the smooth water running to the stones. Then he turned to her again, smiling. “I might have said it,” he remarked. “Mary Nolan was kind to a man who was very far from his own home. I might quite well have said that you were like to Mary Nolan.”
She did not answer that, but dropped her eyes and picked a little piece of clover in the grass that she was sitting on. “Also,” he said, “I think that Charlie Zlinter, although he was not a very good man — he was in love with Mary Nolan. I think perhaps that is another likeness.”
“Lonely people often think that they’re in love, when they aren’t really,” she said quietly. “It must take a long time to be sure you’re properly in love with anybody, and not just lonely.”
“Of course.” He reached out and took her hand and held it in his own hard brown one. “Will we be going to the Howqua tomorrow?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “If you want to, Carl.” More and more like Mary Nolan, she thought, but she could deny him nothing. “If you’re quite sure that it’s safe for a girl so like to Mary Nolan to go back into the Howqua.”
“It is very safe,” he told her. “There is no Charlie here, only a Carl. No bullock driver, only an unregistered doctor full of inhibitions and repressions.”
She laughed, and withdrew her hand. “I wouldn’t put much trust in those,” she replied. She got to her feet. “I’d love to come with you tomorrow, Carl,” she said. “We’ll make it all right with the Dormans, one way or another.”
They began to walk back across the paddock to the car, very near to each other but not touching; to ease the tension she began to question him about the house that he wanted to build in the Howqua valley, how big it was to be, what would it be built of, and how would he get the materials in there. He told her that it would be very small and simple, no more than twelve feet long by ten feet wide; he could afford sawn timber for a house of that description and he thought that he could get everything he needed from the sawmill at Lamirra and get a lorry driver to take it up to Jock McDougall’s paddock on a Saturday; from there Billy Slim could probably get it down for him on a sledge, or he would borrow a horse and a sledge from Billy and shift it himself. He would roof it with tarred felt sheeting of some sort. He thought that he could build it in the week-ends before winter. It would be very simple inside, with just one built-in bunk and a fireplace and a table. “It is all I need,” he said. “Just somewhere to be at the week-ends and to leave fishing rods.”
She said, “And you’re going to build it on the site of Charlie Zlinter’s house?”
“I think so. I do not really think that Charlie Zlinter was related to me, Jenny. There are many Zlinters in Pilsen. It would be pleasant if he was, but anyway, I do not think that we shall ever know. But since there was a man of my name there, if his house was in a pretty place I will build mine where he built his, because we came from the same town. I think it will be pretty; from the map Buller Street ran up the hill not far from the river, and not far from the track that leads down to the crossing now. Perhaps the track itself was Buller Street; perhaps Billy Slim will know. But if it is a pretty place, I will build there.”
Jennifer said, “It sounds as if the house you want to build will be just about the same size as Charlie Zlinter’s house.”
He nodded. “We are very much alike, both living as single men, both working with our hands, not rich men either of us. My needs will be no more than his needs were. I think it may be very like his house.”
She thought of Charlie Zlinter’s house as Mary Nolan had described it to her when she saw it last, the swinging open door, the pail half full of water, the loaf gone green with mould, and the bedclothes that a possum or a rat had made a nest in. She shivered a little. “I’m not sure that I like the thought of building there,” she said. “Perhaps it’s an unlucky place.”
He felt for her hand, and took it in his own as they walked along together. “We will go and see it tomorrow,” he said. “We shall know as soon as we are there if it is a lucky or an unlucky place. I think perhaps it knew great happiness, that place, and if that is true it cannot be unlucky.”
They walked up to the road in silence, hand in hand.
At the old Chevrolet they stopped, unwilling to get into it and drive away. The sun was dropping down towards the tops of the hills; it was time that they were making their way home to Leonora. They lingered by the car a little without speaking, and now he was holding both her hands. “It is here that we should say good-bye,” he said at last. “I will not stay tonight long at the Dormans.” He hesitated. “It is very impertinent and very wrong,” he said, “but may I kiss you?”
She smiled up at him, colouring a little. “If you want to, Carl,” she said.
He put an arm round her shoulders and they stood locked together by the car for a few minutes. Presently she drew back a little, still standing in his arms, and said softly, “I don’t want you to go away with the idea that I’m in love with you, Carl.”
He stroked her cheek, and said smiling, “What are we doing this for, then?”
She said, “Because I don’t suppose you get a chance to do this very often in the camp. How long is it since you did this to a girl, Carl?”
He thought back over his life, holding her in his arms and caressing the soft hair behind her neck. “In 1943 — eight years.”
“Poor Carl.” She drew closer, and kissed him on the lips. “Eight years is a long time.”
Presently he released her, and they got into the car and drove back, sitting very close together in the sunset light, through Jamieson and Banbury to Leonora station.
Ten
JACK AND JANE Dorman stood on the veranda of their homestead next morning, watching the old utility as Carl Zlinter drove it to the road across the paddocks, with Jennifer beside him. The grazier made a little grimace, and turned away. “She’s going to tell him, I suppose,” he said.
His wife nodded. “She didn’t want to tell him here, with all of us about.”
He glanced at her. “You think she’s really serious?”
“She’s serious, all right,” Jane replied. “I must say, I think a lot of her for this. There was never a doubt in her mind about what she ought to do.”
Jack Dorman kicked the leg of a deck-chair. “He couldn’t have married her,” he said. “Anyway, not for years. He’s got another nine months to do in the camp for a start, and then another three years as a student if he wants to be a doctor. It’s probably all for the best.”
Jane went to the door of the kitchen. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. She’s not known him very long — she may forget about him. She’ll have a bad time, though.”
Jennifer sat quiet by Carl Zlinter as he drove the Chev from the Lamirra road up through the paddocks on the way to Howqua, getting out at each fence to open the gate for him to drive through. She was tired and rather pale, but she had worked with Jane to get a nice lunch ready for him; whatever might have happened, it seemed to her important not to spoil his day. It was the same fine, cloudless summer January weather that they had had all the time that she had been at Leonora, the same thin wisp of smoke curled up from behind the Buller range, the same flocks of white cockatoos shrieked and wheeled in shining clouds from gum tree to gum tree in the paddocks that they drove across.
As they passed from the paddocks into the woods she roused herself, and asked him, “How are you going to find out where the cabin was, Carl?”
He smiled down at her. “I have a surveyor’s tape and little wires with coloured marking rags on them,” he said. “They are in the back. I have asked Jim Forrest if I might borrow these things for today.”
“Those are what you use for measuring out, are they?”
He nodded. “I think we can measure and find where the cabin was. If Billy Slim is there, he will help us.”
They drove on up the track to Jock McDougall’s paddock, and the crimson and blue parrots flew ahead of them through the woods as they had before, and a wallaby loped off among the trees till it was lost in the dappled sun and shadows of the aisles. Presently they came up to the meadow at the top of the ridge, and parked the car in the shade, and got out. Jennifer stood looking out over the wide view, at the line after line of blue, forest-covered hills merging into the distance in the bright sunlight.
“This must be one of the loveliest places in the world,” she said. “This is where I should want a cabin, if I lived in this country.”
He smiled at her. “It would be wet and windy and cold up here in the winter,” he said, “with deep snow sometimes. It would be more comfortable down in the valley, by the river.”
She did not answer, but stood looking out over the blue ripples of the forests, storing her memory. He glanced at her and noticed for the first time that she was pale and drawn, almost haggard. “You are looking tired,” he said. “Shall I see if we can drive the Chev down to the river?”
She forced a smile; she must not spoil his day. “I’m all right,” she said. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, that’s all. A walk’ll do me good. We’d better not risk getting the Chev stuck, or we might not be allowed to have it again.”
They turned to the utility and took their lunch, and the grill, and the surveyor’s gear out of the back. He would not let her carry anything. “It is quite all right,” he said. “If there is any more argument, I will carry you too.”
She laughed. “I’d like to see you try,” she said incautiously.
He dropped everything and caught her round the waist and lifted her quickly off the ground. For a moment she rested in his arms, feeling secure for the first time that day; then she put on the mask of flippancy again, and laughed down into his eyes. “All right, you big brute,” she said. “Now put me down again. I knew I wasn’t going to be safe here with a Charlie Zlinter, in these woods.” He put her down, kissed her on the cheek, and released her, flushing and laughing, and bent to pick up the various packages and baskets.