Beyond the Black Stump

by Nevil Shute

  Everything was new to her, and yet she knew it all beforehand. When they went to buy a pack of cigarettes she spurned the hotel shop and walked out to a real drug store, the first that she had entered, and had a milk shake in it with Stan to mark the event. She wondered at the many Japanese shops, so well patronised so soon after the war; nothing in Australia had prepared her for such fraternisation. The affluence and the slow, restful tempo of the place were a delight to her, tired as she was after their long flights. The great, brightly coloured motor cars parked thick beside the sidewalks on every block amazed her with their size and pleased her eye, and she discovered very soon that these were Stan’s weakness, too. “Whatever folks can say against the United States,” he observed once, “and maybe they can say plenty—we certainly do know how to build automobiles …”

  Briefed by her mother back in the distant Lunatic, she insisted upon paying all her own expenses, even down to splitting the bill at The Reef and the hire of the Hertz car, much to Stanton’s distress. She discovered on their last evening that she had spent nearly a hundred dollars in the two days, and her enjoyment of Honolulu was tempered a little by the reflection that twenty pounds a day was quite a lot of money, though, to be sure, she had a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of straw sandals to show for it. As she drifted into sleep that night the Scot in her began to assert herself; lovely as Honolulu was, and it was certainly by far the loveliest place that she had seen, it was in no sense a permanency. It was a place to come to and enjoy and go away from; a place as different from real life as a theatre set. America, she felt, in some way would be different to this.

  Next morning they flew on to Portland, Oregon. They took off soon after dawn after a very early breakfast in their rooms, breakfasted again in the air, and dozed and read magazines and ate all day, in the manner that they were now accustomed to. In the evening towards sunset they crossed the coast losing height fast, swept round over a great river, and landed on the airport of Portland.

  As they walked over to the enclosure, Stanton said, “Say, honey—there’s Mom and Dad, come to meet us!” She looked where he was pointing, and saw a stout man in a grey suit lift a hand to them in salutation, and a grey-haired woman, who must be his mother, waving.

  As they passed through the gate, Stanton said, “Hi-yah, Mom!” and kissed his mother. She said, “Oh, Junior, it’s good to have you back!”

  He turned to the girl. “Mom, I want you to meet Mollie Regan.”

  His mother caught one of her hands affectionately, “Well now,” she said, “isn’t this just lovely.”

  Nine

  MOLLIE found the kindness of the Lairds quite inexhaustible. They drove from the airport to the Congress Hotel in the family Mercury, and as they got into it Mrs. Laird presented Mollie with a Pendleton jacket of tartan wool, very cosy and comforting. “It’s such a hot place that you’ve come from, dear,” she said, “and Honolulu’s hot, too, so they tell me. It can get mighty cold here in the evenings, and you want to be careful, driving. Slip it on now, so you don’t catch cold. I’m afraid maybe I got it just one size too big, but we’ll be passing through Pendleton tomorrow and they’ll change it.”

  The girl slipped it on over her light summer frock. “It’s terribly kind of you, Mrs. Laird,” she said. “It really is a lovely thing.” She wrapped it round her appreciatively. “It is quite a bit colder here than it was this morning.”

  “I guess the colour’s about right, Mom,” said Stan’s father. He turned to the girl. “We had quite an argument, Mom and I. Junior said in a letter that you had bronze hair, ’n I said a two-tone jacket in a kinda brown would be the best. But Mom said green. I guess she was right, too. You certainly look mighty nice in it, Miss Regan.”

  She laughed, and flushed a little. “It’s beaut,” she said. “I’ve not got much to wear except hot weather things, and I know I’m going to wear this a lot.”

  Mrs. Laird said, “I think it suits you. You’ve got such pretty lights in your hair. But I’d say just one size smaller might be better. We’ll stop off on the way home tomorrow and see if you like one a size smaller. Now you get right in here in the back with me, dear, and let Stan drive in front with his father, and you tell me all about your trip. My, haven’t you come a long way!”

  In the hotel Stanton’s mother took the girl up to her room. The well furnished, standardised hotel room was embellished with a great bowl of roses, and a little assortment of new bottles of lotions and Eau de Cologne stood on the dressing table. “I didn’t know what you use, dear,” the older woman said a little diffidently. “But I kinda thought perhaps you might be tired. Oh, they’re nothing. I reckon a hotel room’s just plain miserable without flowers.” By the easy chair, on the floor, stood a pair of new suède, sheepskin-lined boots, calf length and zip-fastened. “Just try them for size, dear. We got quite a way to drive tomorrow, and my feet always get real cold driving, even with the heat on.”

  Impulsively the girl kissed the older woman on the cheek. “You’re so kind,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Mrs. Laird patted her shoulder. “I think it’s brave of you to come such a long way,” she said. “We went once to New York, but Dad was telling me you’ve come three or four times as far.” She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Jun wrote and told us about you not being engaged,” she said. “I think that’s sensible.”

  The girl said, “I think it’s a bit of nonsense, Mrs. Laird. Stan and I wanted to get married. But Ma said we weren’t to be engaged until I’d stayed with you a bit, so that’s the way it is. The only difference is that I haven’t got a ring.”

  Mrs. Laird said, “Your Ma’s right, dear. If Junior wanted to marry a girl from Florida or Mississippi, I’d kind of like her to see how we live up here in Oregon with coloured people riding in the same coaches and going to the same schools, ’n everything, before they got engaged. Folks live differently in different parts. Now, I’m going to call you Mollie. I guess you’d better not call me Mom, though everybody else around the place does. You can call me Helen.”

  The girl laughed. “I shall call you Mom.”

  “Don’t do that, dear. Your Ma mightn’t like it. You just call me Helen.”

  They dined in the hotel, in a room that delighted the girl with its decoration. She did not talk much, content to stay quiet and listen to Stanton’s conversation with his parents, to study the new style of eating with a fork alone, the novel order of foods, the novel foods themselves. Although she had had an introduction to these matters in Honolulu there was still a good deal to be learned, and a good many old habits to be forgotten, if she was to enter into the social life of Hazel without rousing comment.

  Once Mrs. Laird said, “It was so dreadful about Chuck, Jun. I just hated to have to write and tell you about it.”

  Stanton nodded. “Just one of those things, I guess,” he said heavily. “Too bad it had to happen. Where’s Ruth now? She back at home?”

  “Not yet,” said Mrs. Laird. “Seems like they rented an apartment at this Harrisburg place for a year or something. There’s not really room for them back with the Eberharts without they do some building, with all those children. Aimée’s staying down there for a while with Ruthie while Dan makes some alterations to the house; they’re turning the outside garage into a kind of cottage for her.”

  “Quite a lot of work,” said Mr. Laird, “making it over. Putting in a furnace, bathroom, ’n two more rooms. It’s going to cost Dan plenty.”

  “When’s it going to be finished, Dad?”

  “I’d say in about a month. Dan told me Ruthie would be back in Hazel in the fall.”

  “She got any money?”

  “Not a lot. I guess they’re kinda worried about that as well. But Dan don’t say much.”

  There was little to do after their meal but sit around and talk, and after half an hour of that Mrs. Laird suggested that their visitor might want to go to bed early. Mollie resisted the suggestion for another half hour though she was
growing very weary; then she accepted it at about nine o’clock and Stanton escorted her to her room. As they paused in the corridor to say good-night, she asked, “How am I doing, Stan?”

  He drew her to him. “You’re doing fine, honey. You just knocked them cold. Dad said you were like someone from the Eastern States, Connecticut or some place. I guess that’s quite a compliment.”

  “They’re terribly nice, Stan,” she said. “I think your mother is a dear. She’s been so kind—she thinks of everything.”

  He kissed her. “You don’t have to worry about a thing,” he said gently. “Not a thing. Just sit back and enjoy life from now on.”

  “It’s going to be marvellous,” she whispered.

  Presently they parted, and she went into her room to go to bed. The room was warmer than she liked and she turned off the register, and opened a window. The mutter of the city came up to her from below, a continuous murmur of great cars that moved in the street, effortless, continuous. On the building opposite a neon sign flashed in unceasing sequence, and there were many others round about; the rotating beam of an airways beacon swept the horizon monotonously, and now and then an airplane crossed the sky, sliding down towards the runway at the airport. For a moment she thought with longing of the great quiet, the great stillness, around Laragh Station, of the huge, silent panorama of the starry skies, and banished the thought. This was America, and it was marvellous.

  The bed was softer than any she had slept in before, the linen finer, the bedside light more convenient, but she did not sleep very well. There was so much that was strange to her, so much to get accustomed to, so much to enjoy. It was after two in the morning when finally she fell asleep.

  Next day they drove two hundred and fifty miles inland to Hazel. For much of the day the road ran beside the Columbia River, a river bigger than she had imagined that a river could be, flowing through a gigantic valley. For most of the day she rode in the front seat while Stanton drove, his father and mother behind. The scale of the country amazed her; she had known with her intellect that rivers and mountains in America were big, but the reality was nevertheless a surprise. They stopped for half an hour at Celilo Falls to watch the Indians scooping salmon from the rapids with nets and spears, and then drove on all day through an undulating country largely given over to wheat farming, a big-scale country with ranges of mountains and snow-covered peaks usually to be seen in the distance.

  In the middle of the afternoon they came to Pendleton and stopped to change her new jacket for a smaller one. As Mrs. Laird fussed around her in the store Mollie made a diffident, half-hearted effort to pay for the jacket, but the proposal was turned down so emphatically that she withdrew it, afraid of creating an offence in face of such kindness.

  They came to Hazel in the dusk after a long drive from Pendleton through forests of firs, over a low range of mountains. The little town lay in a bowl of the hills, in a wide valley of farm land with high mountains rising up towards the east in the direction of Idaho. They slipped in past the grassy airport, over the railroad tracks, up Main Street, turned up between the Safeway chain food store and a Texaco gas station, and found themselves in a district of quiet, prosperous homes, incredibly like scenes that she had seen upon the movies. They drew up finally before the Laird home on 2nd Street.

  Stanton killed the motor, and turned to the girl beside him. “Gee, honey,” he said very quietly, “it’s nice to be back.”

  It was a house of two storeys and a basement, a white modern frame house, fairly large. It was a well built house in a small area of well kept garden with a number of shade trees, open to the sidewalk and innocent of fences. A path of crazy paving led up to the front door and a wrought iron gate decorated this path at the sidewalk end; there were wrought iron lamps each side of the white front door. At the side of the house a ramp led down into the basement, housing the two cars beside the furnace as is necessary when the snow lies deep. A sprinkler played on the front lawn, and from the back of the house a black and white cocker spaniel came bounding out to meet them, alerted by the sound of the car.

  They got out of the car and a middle-aged woman came down the path to greet them, and was introduced to Mollie as Auntie Claudia, Mrs. Laird’s sister. “My,” she said, “you must be real tired after travelling all that way with Junior! How ever long did it take?”

  The girl said, “About a week. But we stopped off for two days in Honolulu.” Already she was picking up the idioms.

  They went into the house. Inside the door the hot air hit her like a blow, for the Lairds were proud of their thermostatically controlled furnace and regulated it to keep the rooms at the same even temperature, winter and summer. She found that it was the normal habit for the men to take off their jackets when entering the house and sit in their shirt sleeves, and normal for the women to wear light clothes. Her first action in her room on that warm day was to open the window and turn off the heat.

  They had given her the guest bedroom on the ground floor, a pleasant room looking out over the garden, with its own bathroom. She was to discover later that the house had three bathrooms. Here she unpacked her luggage, made herself at home, and settled down to grow accustomed to America in the Laird family.

  They found her surprisingly ignorant of many things that were normal to their daily life. She had never seen a dishwasher or a washing machine, and had to be taught how to use them. This was strange to them, because Hazel High School ran a domestic science course and every boy and girl learned all about these things at school in their early teens. The electric kitchen stove was a great white thing controlled by no less than twenty-six coloured plastic keys like organ stops which lit up and glowed when they were on, arranged in a long row beneath a time clock. It was weeks before she learned to play this instrument, accustomed as she was to cooking on a wood-burning stove stoked by one of the gins. The refrigerator was normal to her, but the deep freeze was a novelty and she had little idea how to deal with food that had been kept in it. They found, however, that she was anxious to learn, and she spent most of her mornings doing housework with Helen Laird.

  Her attitude towards the men’s laundry amused them. It was normal in Hazel for unmarried men to do their own laundry, washing it in the washing machine and ironing their own shirts, collars, and handkerchiefs. It seemed to her a terrible thing that a man should waste his time on chores like that; at Laragh it would have been unheard of. She took charge of Stanton’s laundry from the outset, glad of the opportunity to show Helen Laird that she could do one thing well at any rate, and one Saturday when she found Mr. Laird ironing a shirt she took it away from him.

  “Shucks, Mollie,” he said. “I like doing it. I do this all the time.”

  “I think it’s terrible,” she said. “What am I supposed to do? Sit and twiddle my thumbs and watch you?”

  “What ’ld I do if I wasn’t doing this?” he asked. “Sit and listen to the radio?”

  She took the iron from him. “Go out and earn some money,” she said. “Go out and have a drink—anything. But give me that shirt.”

  He surrendered. “I got enough money,” he said. “I wouldn’t have if I sat in the saloon drinking.” He paused. “You know what?” he enquired. “Mom and I were wondering if you’d like it if we got in a few cans of beer. Junior told us that you drink beer back at home.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s awfully sweet of you, Mr. Laird,” she said. “I do drink it at home, but I’m perfectly all right without it. I’d rather do what other people do.”

  “I guess I’ll get in a few cans anyway,” he said.

  She spread the shirt out on the ironing board. “Don’t do that just for me,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to drink alone. Besides, it ’ld look funny if Helen went into the Safeway and asked for half a dozen cans of beer to carry home down the street.”

  “I wouldn’t ask her to do that,” he said seriously. “I guess I’ll get Jake Feldman to bring them along to the office in a parcel and shove them in the trunk
of the Mercury. Then I’d take them out in the basement and put them right up in the pantry, at the back.”

  He grinned at her boyishly. “I’d kinda like to have an empty can to stand on Claudia’s windowsill among the flower pots, so people ’ld see it from the sidewalk, and think she’d been drinking beer.”

  She laughed at him. “You are a baby! I won’t be any party to it.”

  For the first few days after they arrived in Hazel, Stanton devoted himself to her, took her driving round the countryside, introduced her to friends and acquaintances. Gradually, however, the work claimed him and he began to spend more time down at the business, and in a sense she was glad of it. Her job was to get to know Hazel as a resident and as a wife-to-be, not as a visitor to be escorted round, and this she could hardly do with Stanton at her side. It was better for her to spend her time in shopping and in housework with Helen Laird all day and to go with Stanton to the movies in the evenings, or drive out to some mountain stream or lake with him to fish at the weekends.

  She was touched by the fact that the Lairds, staunch Presbyterians, made it easy for her to go to Mass. She went early in the morning on the first Sunday and returned in time for breakfast, and fell into the habit of going at that time each week. The Lairds, she found, were regular churchgoers in the winter when there wasn’t any fishing, attending the morning service at the Presbyterian Church. In the summer Helen Laird was the only member of the family who showed up regularly at church. The men went fishing, and Mollie went with them.