by Nevil Shute
“I wouldn’t mind spending my life here,” Stanton said. “I don’t think it’s small.”
“It is small, and you can’t get away from it.”
“None of the West’s small, Dad,” said his son. “It’s still The Frontier here. Hazel’s not the same as a small town back East, say in Connecticut. It’s still pioneering here, opening things up and getting new things started. Why, lots of the roads around here aren’t paved yet, an’ you can go thirty miles and never pass a gas station. It’s pioneering here, Dad, still — and will be for a long time.”
His father’s heart glowed. “That’s the way I feel about this place myself,” he said. “I didn’t know you did.”
“Sure it’s the way I feel about it,” his son said emphatically. “It’s pioneering here, Dad, still. It’s not so long since everything came here by ox cart. Grandpa used to drive one. He took me riding in it once.”
“You remember that, son? You were only about three years old.”
“Sure I remember it. This is a frontier town, and that’s all part of it. Maybe it’s not so undeveloped now as it was in Grandpa’s time and we don’t ride around in ox carts, but it’s mighty undeveloped still. It’s only two years since we got television, and we can only get two channels even now. There’s plenty of pioneering to be done here yet, Dad — here on The Frontier. Small town or not, that’s the kind of place I like to work in, not in the big cities.”
His father said, “Well, think it over, son, and let me know before Christmas.”
Two
IT IS DOUBTFUL if much pioneering in the State of West Australia ever was done by ox cart, for oxen need water, a commodity that has always been in short supply over most of the state. The diesel semi-trailer takes its place, and about a week later the semi-trailer driven by Spinifex Joe ground to a standstill in a swirl of red dust before the homestead of Laragh Station.
Spinifex Joe looked like a half-caste and may have been one, for he was vague himself about his father and not much more certain of his mother. He was a small, lean man about fifty years of age, good with diesel engines, a good bush mechanic capable of making quite a tolerable repair by welding when the need arose. He had use for these qualities, because he was the postman. Each week he started on Monday morning from the post office at Onslow on the coast of West Australia just inside the tropic and drove eastwards, loaded with two or three sacks of mail that had reached Onslow by air, an assortment of packing cases destined for the stations that he served, a number of drums of fuel and kerosene, and all the aboriginals who cared to climb on board.
His route took him eastwards through the stations for about two hundred miles to a property called Malvern Downs, the end of the so-called road. From there he took to the bush tracks, lurching and swaying over the bare red earth, hard-baked in the sun; when one bit of his road became worn out he deviated and made another track. From Malvern he went to Mannahill, from Mannahill to Laragh, from Laragh on to Poonda, Mulga Downs, and Millstream, and so back to Onslow. The whole journey was about six hundred and fifty miles and it took him a week of blazing sun, red dust, and small mechanical repairs. He never travelled without a forty-gallon drum of water on the back and he frequently had need of it when tire trouble or breakdowns delayed him. Normally he slept on the bare earth underneath the trailer, his head pillowed on a tarpaulin. That was his whole life; he had no other home.
On the flat tray of his semi-trailer when he stopped at Laragh were three bales of wool trimmings that stank in the hot sun, about thirty drums of various fuels with a few empties, eleven packing cases, two coloured stockmen with their wives, or gins, and their many children on their way to Poonda, and five assorted full-bloods probably just coming for the ride. In addition, he brought three small sacks of mail.
Mrs. Regan was waiting for him on the verandah of the homestead, a tall, commanding woman about fifty years of age, born in Edinburgh and brought to West Australia as a child. With her was her twenty-year-old daughter, Mollie, one of her eleven children, and David Cope. David was English, twenty-two years old, born and bred upon a farm near Newbury. His parents’ farm had been requisitioned for an airdrome during the war, and covered with great concrete runways. For the first years of peace they had battled with the Ministry to get their land back, and had failed; they had then emigrated as a family to West Australia and had bought a farm at Armadale, near Perth. At the age of sixteen David had gone as a jackeroo upon a sheep station, to learn the business. He had stayed there for four years and had remained enthusiastic about sheep, with the result that now, only two years later, he was manager and part owner of Lucinda Station, white enthusiasts being something of a rarity in the far north of West Australia.
Lucinda was a property of about three hundred and twenty thousand acres that lay to the west of Laragh, a sizable stretch of country somewhat hampered by a water supply that would have been deemed inadequate for a three-hundred-acre farm in England. The mail truck did not come to Lucinda, but David had a radio transreceiver for use with the Flying Doctor service, and so he kept himself informed of the progress of the mail truck as the housewives gossiped together on the natter session after the scheduled calls. That morning he had driven thirty miles in his jeep to collect his letters at Laragh, a cheerful, energetic young man in a torn khaki shirt, shorts, and sandals on his bare feet, all thickly powdered with red dust.
He had been sitting with the women on the verandah, drinking tea and waiting for the truck. As it ground to a standstill he got up and went out into the sun to meet the driver. Mrs. Regan followed him.
“Morning, Joe,” he said. “How are you today?”
“Good,” said the driver. “Country drying up again.” He selected one of the three mail sacks that rode with him in the cab, and pulled it out onto the ground.
Mrs. Regan cast an eye over the loaded tray. None of the blacks meant anything to her, but the drums did. “You brought my kerosene, Joe?” she enquired.
“Two kero,” he said laconically. “Six diesel and four petrol. That right?”
“Aye,” she replied, “that’s right. Will ye have a cup of tea? Pat’ll be down with the boys in a minute to unload.”
He followed her to the verandah carrying the mail sack, and sat down on the edge of it while he sorted through the letters; she did not ask him to sit in a chair with them. Mollie poured out a large cup of very strong tea with a great spoonful of sugar in it, and took it to him on the edge of the verandah. At the truck the aboriginals got down onto the ground and squatted underneath the trailer in the shade.
Beside the homestead stood the station store, a large, dimly lit building full of every kind of hardware ranged on shelves, where the blacks and half-castes could buy blankets, shirts, trousers, dresses, stockwhips, red and yellow scarves, stockmen’s hats, and riding boots, together with a small variety of sweets and chocolate, and soft drinks. Beside that was a smaller building that served as the station office and the school. The door opened now and a flood of children burst out into the sun, children of all colours from the deepest black to pure tanned white, all ages from four to twelve. There were about thirty of them; the two white ones came over to the homestead. These were Mrs. Regan’s youngest children, Maggie and Shamus. The station bookkeeper, who also served as the schoolmaster, followed them.
He was a shambling, grey-haired, scholarly-looking man, well into his sixties. Spinifex Joe handed a bundle of letters and parcels to Mrs. Regan, who took them on her lap and began to sort them through. She looked up as the schoolmaster approached. “Here’s one for you, Judge,” she called. “And here’s your newspaper from England.”
He approached, and took them from her. “Thank you indeed,” he said. “My sister is a very regular correspondent, is she not?”
“Aye,” said Mrs. Regan. “Never forgets to write.”
A Land Rover appeared from the direction of the station stockyard half a mile away. Mrs. Regan said to the postman, “Here’s Pat and the boys, Joe. They’ll get the
drums off.” To her daughter she said, “Get the bottle, Mollie, and the cold water and the glasses.”
The girl went off and turned the corner of the verandah towards the kitchen; the eyes of the young Englishman from Lucinda followed her. The little truck drew up beside the semi-trailer and two young half-caste men got out. From the driver’s seat a huge, powerful old man emerged. He was over seventy years of age, but he still boasted a shock of bright red hair. He was dressed in soiled trousers of jungle green and a khaki shirt, with elastic-sided riding boots. He had come from breaking horses with his sons down at the yard, and he carried a stockwhip in his hand. On his shoulder perched a kangaroo mouse.
David Cope got to his feet as the old man came to the verandah. “Morning, Mr. Regan,” he said. He eyed the long-legged mouse. “What’s that you’ve got there — a hopper?”
“What else would it be?” asked Mr. Regan. “The kindest hopper this side of the black stump.” He paid no more attention to the young man but took the bunch of letters from his wife and shuffled them through. Spinifex Joe crossed to his truck and began to lay the skids down from the trailer to the ground to get the drums off, helped by the young men. David Cope sat down again upon the edge of the verandah.
Pat Regan picked out a letter in a long official envelope and peered at it suspiciously. The mouse peered with him from his shoulder. There was an official imprint on the envelope; he would not admit that he now needed glasses, and he had never read well anyway. “In the Name of God!” he exclaimed, “what would this one be?”
His wife took it from him and screwed up her eyes. “It says, Bureau of Mineral Resources,” she told him. “That will be those people that were here before, fossicking about after the oil.”
“God mend them! They’ll not be after coming back again?”
“It may say in the letter.”
“Well, open it and read it, woman,” said the old man testily. “Open it and read it, and see what it says.”
His wife put on her iron-rimmed glasses and opened the letter. She read it through in silence. “It’s from that man Bruce who was here before,” she said. “He says he’s coming here again about the first of the month and bringing with him six Americans belonging to the Topeka Exploration Company to make a seismic survey. I don’t know what that is, or how you say it. He says that they’ll be working on our land about fourteen miles west of the homestead. He says they’ll be a party of seven, with three trucks.”
“Did ye ever hear the like of that!” exclaimed the old man angrily.
“That’s what he says,” his wife remarked equably. “He says at the end that the something survey will decide whether they drill a test well here or not.”
The girl came back carrying a tray and set it down on the table. Her father said irritably, “Will ye write straight back and say that they’re not wanted here. I’ll have no part of them, no part at all.”
“Go easy now, and have your shot of rum,” his wife said quietly. She laid the letter down and reached out for the bottle and poured out half a tumbler of neat overproof rum into one glass, and half a tumbler of ice-cold water into another. “Take that, and then come on and sit down in the shade.”
The old man lifted the mouse carefully down from his shoulder and set it down upon the ground at the end of the verandah; he gave it a gentle pat behind and it ran under the house. Then he came up onto the verandah and took the glass of rum his wife held out to him, shot it down in one swallow, and followed it with a chaser of water from the other glass. Then he sat down heavily beside his wife. “Give yeself a rum, Judge,” he said. “Give yeself one, David. Americans, is it? Americans on Laragh Station!” He spat scornfully onto the withered grass lawn of the homestead. “If there’s money to be gathered any place in the wide world those boys are after it, deep down in the earth on other men’s land, ten thousand weary miles from their own rightful place. They’ll be after the smell of it, like a pack of rats will find a bit of stinking fish.”
He flared up suddenly into a fury. “Go on and write the letter, Judge. I’ll not have Americans on Laragh Station, not if the Holy Father was to write from Rome itself.”
The old man that he called the Judge snuffled and rubbed a hand across his nose, a habitual gesture when he was perplexed. “I doubt if we have any right to refuse them, Mr. Regan,” he said gently. “We hold this land upon a pastoral lease. There is a clause in the agreement that reserves the mineral rights to the State of West Australia, and that binds us to give reasonable access to any part of the land for the exploitation of the mineral resources.”
“And would ye call it reasonable that they should bring Americans to Laragh? Will ye answer me that, now?”
The Judge poured himself a rum and shot it down, following it with a chaser of water. “Some Americans are very pleasant people,” he observed. “I met a bishop once, an Episcopalian, who was quite charming. But mundane, I am afraid. Very, very mundane.” He sucked a drop of rum from his thin, straggling moustache.
David Cope poured about half an inch of rum into the bottom of a tumbler and filled it up with water. He did not dare to risk the old man’s displeasure by refusing a drink, and he had not yet learned to drink rum neat. He said, “They’ll be working not far from our fence, Pat. They’ll probably be nearer my place than they are to you, in fact. I think it might be rather fun, having some Americans around.”
“Fun, is it?” exclaimed Mr. Regan. “Would ye be after calling fun the way they carried on in Alice Springs all through the war? Glory be to God, no young girl living in the town that wasn’t raped, and no old woman safe save in the house itself and the door locked and bars on all the windows and Father O’Connor praying with her on their bended knees, with the American soldiers bellowing around the house like raging bulls! Is it fun ye call it?”
“It was not like that at all, Pat,” said Mrs. Regan placidly. “If there’s any raping done on Laragh it won’t be by the Americans.”
David Cope said in mock alarm, “I hope you don’t mean me, Mrs. Regan.”
“No,” she said tranquilly, “I don’t mean you. There’s going to be no raping here on Laragh Station. Heaven knows, the Judge’s got enough children in the school already.”
The old man rubbed his nose and snuffled. “That is very true. I shall have six more children in the school next month than we have desks for — the Vogue twins, and Mrs. Stockton’s Elsie, and little Johnny Six, and Palmolive’s little girl, and the Yardley boy. I think we ought to order eight more desks, Mr. Regan. I cannot rebuke them for bad writing when they have to balance their slates on their knees.”
The old man grunted. His wife said, “We will need the desks, Pat. Let the Judge write the order now, and Spinifex can take it with the mail.”
Her daughter said, “Here’s Uncle Tom coming.”
Tom Regan appeared around the corner of the verandah. He was a very thin man, recently aroused from sleep; he had not shaved for several days. He had not the exuberant virility of his brother Pat because he had gastric ulcers, aggravated no doubt by the rum he loved to shoot down neat. He now did little work upon the property, yet his was still the directing mind. He shuffled down the verandah. Mrs. Regan poured him a rum and a glass of water. He took them from her without a word.
“A letter from Mr. Bruce, Tom,” Mrs. Regan said. “He’s coming back with some American engineers to do another survey.”
“How many of them?”
“Seven, with three trucks.” She paused. “We can’t have that many in the house.”
“It’s all a part of it,” said Tom dolefully.
His brother Pat said, “Isn’t there the shearers’ quarters empty for them to sleep in, with wire beds for their bedding and a stove for them to cook on?”
“Aye,” said Mrs. Regan doubtfully, “they might go there.”
The girl said impulsively, “You can’t put Americans in the shearers’ quarters, Ma.”
“In the Name of God,” asked Pat, “why not?”
/> “They live differently to that,” his daughter said stubbornly. “I’ve seen how they live on the pictures, Father, down in Perth. They live in lovely sort of flats called penthouses on the top of skyscrapers, or in big white houses about a hundred feet high with columns in front. It wouldn’t do to put them in the shearers’ quarters.”
“Did you ever hear the like of that!” exclaimed her father. “It’s a queer thing, I’m thinking, that the shearers’ quarters would be good enough for an Australian shearer and not good enough for an American, with all the lechery and evil in the world in his black heart.”
David Cope laughed. “I see we’re going to have some fun and games around here in the next week or two,” he said. “I can put a couple of them up at my place if they can make do with the gins’ cooking.”
“They’d be better doing their own cooking in the shearers’ quarters,” said Mrs. Regan drily. “No, leave it, David. Mr. Bruce knows the way things are with us and that we can’t accommodate that many. They’ll have everything they need for camping by their trucks, or they can sleep in the shearers’ place. I might make shift to feed them if it comes to that.”
She turned to the other letters on her lap. The Judge went off to his desk in the store office to write an order for school desks and slates, and Mrs. Regan opened all the other letters for the two men. Spinifex Joe vanished in the direction of the kitchen; he would wait at Laragh till the letters were written before going on. The two half-caste boys began rolling the drums of kerosene and petrol towards the store. The aboriginals squatted motionless in the dust beneath the truck.
David Cope picked up his own letters and glanced them through. There was nothing that required immediate attention. He slipped the letters he had brought with him in the breast pocket of his shirt into the post bag, said good-bye to Mrs. Regan, and walked towards his jeep. Mollie got up and walked out into the sun with him, to see him off.