Beyond the Black Stump

by Nevil Shute

  “We’ll have to run a line of shot holes right across, ’n take some seismic readings,” Stanton said. “The only thing is, I don’t know that we’ve got the right to go in there.”

  “Hell,” said Spencer Rasmussen, “who’s to stop us?”

  “It doesn’t belong to Laragh Station now. It belongs to the Shire.”

  “All the better. They don’t take no interest in it.”

  “I guess we’d better get permission from the Shire Office.”

  The Shire Office was in a little town called Yantaringa about a hundred and seventy miles to the north of them; it boasted a hotel with three dormitory bedrooms, a store, an airstrip, and sixty-three citizens. Spencer Rasmussen grumbled a good deal, but drove over one day in the jeep, arriving in the metropolis after eight hours’ hard driving. The Shire Clerk, he found, was also the storekeeper, Clerk to the Justices, Shell agent, aerodrome manager, postman, and registrar of births, deaths, and marriages.

  Spencer Rasmussen explained his business. “Aw, look,” said the Shire Clerk. “Do what you like so long as you don’t disturb the Chinaman.”

  “We’ll be operating at the other end, more than half a mile away from the grave.”

  “Good-oh. You won’t wake him up.”

  Spencer Rasmussen got into his jeep and drove a hundred and seventy miles back in a fury. Next day the Americans moved up towards the cemetery and commenced to drill a line of six shot holes in a position laid down to a yard by Stanton Laird, the last two of which were within the cemetery area. To run their big trucks in they removed a section of the nominal, single-strand, barbed wire fence.

  While they were doing this a half-caste on a horse appeared out of the blue, herding half a dozen sheep before him on some obscure mustering errand. This was Joseph Plunkett, one of Pat’s sons by the Countess Markievicz. He waved to them and reined in, smiling broadly, and exchanged a few words with Hank, accepting a cigarette. He stayed with them for an hour, watching the drilling in progress, and then remounted, gathered his sheep together from their grazing in the cemetery, and made off over the horizon with his little flock, singing as he rode.

  At Laragh Station that evening, in the forum of the station store, sitting on the floor or on the boxes drinking rum out of enamelled pannikins, the men discussed this new development. “Aren’t they the queer fellows?” asked Pat Regan. “It’s a strange thing that with all the length and breadth of Australia laid out before them, they must choose a cemetery to make their holes.”

  “It will bring them no luck,” said Tom soberly. “No luck at all. No good ever came to men who desecrate a cemetery.” There was a long silence while his words sank in. “Ye remember the strongpoint in Kilgorran cemetery made by the English—the curse of Cromwell on them?”

  “I do so,” said Pat. “We had them destroyed entirely. James Doherty crept up beneath the wall and threw in two grenades. There was only two of them not killed or wounded, and they lepping the walls like mountain goats till the rifles got them. No good ever came of desecrating a cemetery.”

  “Sure,” said Tom, “only the Black and Tans or the Americans would think to do a thing like that.”

  The Judge stirred. “How very right you are,” he said quietly. “God’s acre has to be protected from unscrupulous and thoughtless men. I take it that the cemetery is clearly marked?”

  “Wasn’t there a fine board painted with the name, unless it’s blown down or somebody has taken it to make a fire,” said Pat. “I painted it with these same hands, not more than eight years back.”

  “I saw it last summer. It was still there then,” said Tom. “And a fine strand of barbed wire, hardly rusty even, all around.”

  The Judge said gravely,

  “Yet even these bones from insult to protect

  Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

  With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,

  Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.”

  “That’s a lovely piece of poetry,” said Pat Regan. “A lovely, lovely piece.” He savoured it. “ ‘Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.’ ” He reached out for the rum bottle and poured about two inches into the Judge’s pannikin. “The loveliest piece this side of the black stump.”

  The Judge took the rum and shot it down, following it with a pannikin of water. “It is a very dreadful thing that the cupidity of man should reach out to disturb the dead,” he said. “The greed for money is a terrible obsession.”

  “It will bring no luck,” said Tom. “It’s destroyed that we’ll all be, we and they together.”

  “What would you think, now,” asked Pat Regan, “if we were to write a letter and tell Father Ryan the way they’re digging up the dead?”

  Tom replied, “He’d say that he’d have nought to do with you while you were living in mortal sin.”

  “Sure, and I know he would. He’s been saying that the last sixteen years, and Father O’Connor before him. But would he not pay attention to a sacrilege?”

  “It’s not his sacrilege. He never blessed it, because he wouldn’t come on to the station.”

  “Sure, someone must have blessed it. Would the Protestants have blessed it, would you say?”

  Tom Regan spat. “I wouldn’t know what the heathen would be after doing.”

  The Judge said, “God speaks in divers ways, in divers centuries. In ages past He spoke through the mouths of the prophets. In these times He speaks through the mouths of the common people of the country. God will not suffer His word to be mocked, nor the faithful to be disturbed in their eternal rest.”

  It was several days before Spinifex Joe arrived in his semi-trailer to take the mail, and the Geraldton Advocate was published only once a week, so that it was nearly three weeks before the startled populace of Geraldton learned from the correspondence column what was going on within five hundred miles of them. Then they read,

  SIR,

  In these troubled times a voice raised in an endeavour to protect the simple decencies of Christian life may be, indeed, a voice crying in the wilderness. Yet I have confidence that when the readers of the Advocate learn of an act of desecration carried out in their vicinity they will rise up in their wrath and sweep away the wrongdoers.

  In the Shire of Yantaringa, in a district seldom visited by newspaper correspondents, there is a cemetery. If judged by the number of burials it is not large; indeed, in numbers it is even smaller than that most famous cemetery of all time, Stoke Poges where Thomas Gray wrote his immortal Elegy. God’s Acre, however, is not to be judged by numbers or by size; an act of desecration is unaltered by the numbers of the graves.

  It is unfortunate that this small island of the Christian faith lies in the path of Topex Exploration Incorporated, an American company now carrying out explorations for mineral oil resources by arrangement with the Government of West Australia. No doubt the Americans look upon these matters in a different way from those of us who are blessed by membership of the British Commonwealth. Be that as it may, the fact remains that drilling operations to find oil are now going on within the precincts of the cemetery, to the undying shame of every citizen of West Australia. There are imponderable verities, the true foundations of our faith, more valuable than oil.

  Can nothing be done to throw back the forces of cupidity and evil in their onward march?

  I am, sir,

  PRO BONO PUBLICO

  The Editor of the Advocate was well aware that his readers liked the correspondence column, and he did his best to keep it interesting for them. A certain Judy Halloran, aged twenty, had recently inserted in his paper an announcement of her engagement to Ted McKie, which had seemed innocuous enough till her mother had written in a fury to say that Judy wasn’t engaged to anyone, least of all to Ted McKie. He had printed that letter, and Judy’s answer to her mother, and had carried on the dispute for some weeks with a noticeable rise in circulation till the correspondence had terminated with a final shot from Judy on her twenty-first birthday. Since then
the column had been in the doldrums, so that the letter from PRO BONO PUBLICO came as a refreshing breeze. He checked the facts with a call to the Shire Clerk of Yantaringa, and put it in the paper.

  It caused a minor rumpus, and then raised a laugh. The letter was picked up by the Perth Observer, and the editor rang Mr. Colin Spriggs, the Topex manager in Perth, Mr. Spriggs knew that Stanton Laird and his crew had got permission to take seismic readings in a cemetery, but was under the impression that the cemetery was disused. He promised to get further details without delay, and the editor agreed to hold the story.

  Mr. Spriggs spoke to Stanton Laird that evening, faintly, by long-distance telephone and Flying Doctor radio. It took him some time to get the full story of Yantaringa cemetery because at first he did not believe the words he heard and assumed that the faint line was distorting the message. When he at last put down the receiver he sat for a few moments in puzzled thought. In his younger days he had seen service in Central Arabia, Venezuela, and in Canada, but he had never struck one quite like this before. He was very conscious that he was a stranger in a strange land, and that it was necessary for him to behave with circumspection.

  He picked up the receiver again, and rang up the editor. “Say, Bob,” he said. “I’ve just been talking with our geologist, Stan Laird. I guess it’s partly right about the cemetery, but it’s a kind of a funny story.”

  “What kind of funny story?”

  “Say, do you know a part of the country that they call the Lunatic?”

  The other laughed. “In the East Hammersleys?”

  “That’s right. This story comes from there, and I’d say it’s about the only place it could come from.”

  When they met a quarter of an hour later over a drink in the Adelphi Hotel, the editor was inclined to agree with Mr. Spriggs. His reaction was that it was time that he ran another feature story on the search for oil in the outback. It seemed uncertain if the Yantaringa cemetery was consecrated ground or not and so he killed the story, but a gas seepage in a new district was news in an oil-starved Australia whether it was consecrated or not. He asked Mr. Spriggs if he had any objection if he were to send up a reporter and a photographer. Mr. Spriggs had none.

  The two newspaper men came to the Lunatic from Perth in a Land Rover in four days of hard travelling. They reached Laragh Station about midday on their last leg to the Topex camp, and were invited to stay to dinner by Mrs. Regan and Mollie. Pat and the half-caste boys were away out on the property, but Tom was there, and the Judge appeared at the lunch table. The newspaper men said nothing about the cemetery but made small talk about the weather, the chance of rain, and the ram sales. They found conversation with Tom Regan while he was pre-occupied with his dinner to be an uphill job, but the Judge was more forthcoming.

  “I have sometimes found it in my heart to envy you gentlemen of the Press,” he said. “So great an influence is yours. And yet, I suppose that your responsibilities must weigh upon you very heavily at times.”

  Phil Patterson, the photographer, felt that some confirmatory interjection was required, and so he said, “Too right.”

  “Indeed, I am sure that it must be so. To lay down your pen and read again the words that you have written with such anxious care, changing a colon for a semi-colon here, a comma there—and then to reflect that the words which you have written will take the wings of Ariel and fly around the world, changing the lives, perhaps of unseen people in Natal, of unknown people in Hong Kong or Somerset. It must take great courage, sometimes, to put forth the message from your desk.”

  Duncan Mann, the reporter, thought of the drunk-in-charge stories, the bathing-beauty stories, and the New-Australian stabbing stories that were his daily work, and repressed a smile. “The editor takes most of that responsibility,” he said.

  “Indeed. I should have thought of that.” He turned and breathed rum at them with great charm. “I am afraid that I am very ignorant of the newspaper world.”

  Mr. Mann laughed. “Perhaps that’s the best way.” He paused, and then said, “Are you the book-keeper here, sir?” He wondered why he had added the ‘sir’.

  “Book-keeper and schoolmaster, book-keeper and schoolmaster. I sometimes fear my book-keeping is not all it might be, but Michael is a tower of strength. Yes, a very tower of strength. But schoolmaster—that I am. I know my limitations, and I know my capabilities. I can teach boys and girls, of any age—anything.”

  Duncan Mann felt queerly that he was on to something big, but there was no story that he could see. “Was Michael one of your pupils?” he asked. He wrinkled his brows. “That wouldn’t be Michael Regan, down in Perth?”

  “Indeed he is. Michael Regan was one of my first pupils when I came here. A very gifted boy, very, very gifted. He should have been a mathematician, but he became a chartered accountant.”

  The reporter recalled the accountant; he must be close on thirty years old, he thought. “You must have been here a long time,” he said.

  “Twenty years,” the Judge said. “Twenty years next March. It does not seem a long time, but I suppose it is.”

  Phil Patterson said, “I suppose you get away sometimes for a holiday.”

  The Judge shook his head. “I fear that I am growing just a little old for holidays,” he replied. “I went to Perth in 1944, but I did not find it very satisfactory.” In fact, he had been drunk for three days, had spent a night in the cooler, and had been fined a pound. “I find it more comfortable to live quietly here.”

  “It’s ten years since you left the property?” asked Duncan Mann.

  “Oh dear no. Mr. Rogerson at Mannahill puts on an exhibition of cinema films on Saturdays, and we go frequently to that. Sometimes I go with Mr. Regan to the ram sales at Onslow. But for the most part I live quietly here, teaching the children.”

  “How many children do you teach?”

  “Thirty-two, at the moment.”

  “All coloured?”

  “All but two. There was a time when I first came here when I had as many as nine white children from this property and two more from Lucinda, and a great number of half-castes. But we are all growing old here now, and there are fewer white children, and correspondingly more half-castes and full-bloods. They differ in their abilities and their desire for education in proportion to their colour. I teach Euclid and Euripides to the white children, carpentry and harness-making to the full-bloods, and a little of each to the half-castes. But all are equally rewarding.”

  Tom Regan finished his pudding, got up from the table, muttered something unintelligible, and went out of the door. The others followed him. The Judge bade a courtly good-bye to the reporters and went off to the store; for the moment the two newspaper men were left alone on the verandah.

  “Well, anyway,” muttered Duncan Mann to his companion, “we know who Pro Bono Publico is now.”

  Mrs. Regan and Mollie came out on the verandah. The newspaper men thanked them for their hospitality, and said that they must get going now to the Americans’ camp.

  “Och, that’s nothing,” said Mrs. Regan. “Come in again on your way back to Perth. Ye wouldn’t rather sleep here and go out to them from here? It’s only about fifteen miles.”

  Duncan Mann said, “I did think of that. It’s very kind of you, but we’ve got stretchers and blankets in the truck, and Mr. Spriggs said they could put us up in camp. It’s probably better for them if we talk after dark. We don’t want to interrupt their work.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Tell me, how do we get there?”

  “Ye see the shearing shed? Well, out past that ye’ll see the wheel tracks on the ground. Ye follow them for fourteen miles, and then ye’ll find the cemetery and the gate into Lucinda. Turn north along the fence about three or four miles, and there’s the camp. Ye can’t mistake it.”

  Mollie said, “I’d better go with them, Ma. It’s not very easy for a stranger.”

  The newspaper men protested that they could find their way, but Mrs. Regan approv
ed the idea. “Take her along,” she said drily. “It might save sending out a search party. The boys out there, they’ll drive her back tonight.”

  “I’ll get some ice cream, too,” the girl said. She went off and changed into drill slacks and shirt, and got into the Land Rover, and went off with the men.

  When they got to the cemetery the reporter stopped the car, and sat looking at it. “So that’s it,” he said.

  She was a little surprised at their interest. “There’s nobody buried there,” she remarked. “Only the Chinaman.”

  “The Chinaman?”

  She told them what she knew about the cemetery, which was not very much; she had never taken a great deal of interest in it. Presently they drove on to the Americans’ camp.

  Stanton Laird came out to meet them as they drove up. She made the introductions, and they went into the office tent out of the sun.

  Duncan Mann said, “I’ll tell you what we’ve come about, Mr. Laird. There was a letter published in the Geraldton Advocate that said that you’d been drilling in a cemetery. We came to the conclusion there was nothing in that story, and my editor killed it when he’d talked about it with your Mr. Spriggs. What did interest us was this news of a gas seepage you’d discovered, which came out while my editor was talking to Mr. Spriggs. Now that’s real news, here in Australia. My editor thought he’d better send us up to write a feature or two on what you’re doing here, take a few photographs, too.”

  The geologist nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “I did hear there’d been a letter. Do you know what was in it?”

  “I’ve got it here.” The reporter pulled out his wallet, extracted a cutting, and spread it out upon the drawing board for them to read.