A Cry from the Dark (9 page)

She had gone to see Miss Dampier about a knotty grammatical problem in her article: “each of the shopkeepers has their own speciality” she wanted to say, to avoid the awkwardness of “his or her” (though, truth to tell, there were no female shopkeepers in Bundaroo apart from Mrs. Won, standing in for her husband when he was away setting up a Chinese restaurant in Lismore), but she had an awkward sense that this was not allowable, and might be the sort of thing that someone at the
Bulletin
head office might seize on. There was a lot about the
Bulletin
that she did not understand, such as its determination to refer to New Zealand as Maoriland, and even to abbreviate it to ML rather than NZ.

“Don't you think that might do more harm than good?” asked Miss Dampier. “It might work in junior school, but Hughie is a bit old to have a teacher fighting his battles for him.”

“I don't want there to be any fighting,” said Betty.

“I was speaking metaphorically,” said Miss Dampier. “I think you could help Hughie more than I could. Try to persuade him to fit in better.”

“Why should he fit in?” asked Betty, uneasily conscious that this was precisely what she had tried to accomplish. “He's grown up in a different country, and been educated at a different sort of school. Of course he's different. We could learn from him.”

“But he really doesn't make much
eff
ort—”

“What should he do? Play football—what he calls rugby—and get his teeth knocked out so as to be one of the boys? Or hit sixes to the boundary in white flannels?”

“You know Bundaroo doesn't run to white flannels,” said Miss Dampier.

“It's not going to happen. Hughie's not against sport, but he just can't be bothered. He is interested in Australian art.”

“
That
isn't likely to win him many friends apart from you,” said Miss Dampier. “He doesn't
have
to be so
different,
you know. After all, Herbie Cox was born in England—”

“And he was
four
when he came out here,” said Betty, scornfully.

Miss Dampier was later to prove a tower of strength at the time of the rape, but on this occasion Betty thought she failed her. Her admirable attempts to infiltrate an Australian element into the English-dominated literature syllabuses of the New South Wales education authorities was welcome and exciting to Betty, but she felt her attitudes had spilled over into the larger areas of life, making her instinctively unsympathetic to Hughie's predicament. Betty hadn't meant her to do anything obvious, such as call people together and try to broker peace. That would inevitably be doomed to failure. But she had thought she might do something more subtle, to emphasize that Britain and Bundaroo could benefit and learn from each other. She wasn't sure what this subtle gesture might be, but she thought a teacher ought to be able to devise something.

Hughie's isolation from the rest of the school was now (Betty apart) complete. The juniors shouted mockingly at him as he walked alone, and sometimes even plucked up courage to do it when Betty was with him, shouting “homo” and “mummy's boy” and “mardarse” at the backs of both of them. In class if he said anything, there was always a suppressed snigger, and his comments were never taken up. In the playground, on the school bus, on the walk to Bundaroo, he was totally shunned.

“It's like the Jews in Germany,” said Betty to Mr. Copley, who taught her maths and science.

“You're exaggerating a little, Betty,” said that mild man, devoted to fact and exactness.

“They all lose so much, not talking to him and listening to him.”

That Mr. Copley had to agree with.

“That's very true. All education is a matter of talking and listening and profiting by it.” He added, in a rare indiscretion, “I blame his father.”

For, in truth, Paul Naismyth was not helping his son, his wife, or anyone else, especially himself. He was not so foolish as to believe that an Australian sheep and cattle property could be run exactly as if it were a Northumbrian farm. But he was stupid enough to believe that Australian rural workers could be handled in the same way, with the same methods, as he had used with English farmworkers. And he would not be told—not by Bill Cheveley, Kevin Drayton, or anyone else at Wilgandra. “I've run a property back home,” he would say. “Trust me—I know what I'm doing.” At first no one asked the obvious question: why, if he'd done it successfully, he was now in Australia. Quite soon politeness wore thin, deference still thinner, and the question was thrown at him by stockmen and shearers alike. His matinée-idol good looks soon modulated into petulance and impotent rage. His only response was to glower and turn on his heels.

The story went around town that he was about to be sacked. The story was self-generating, mere wishful thinking, and it spread the more readily for being what everyone wanted. Bill Cheveley knew that he had to be loyal to his appointee, and he always said that the murmurs were nonsense, that Paul was doing a fine job and was a dinkum bloke. But his loyalty was—had to be—finite. He was watching events, cataloging the relationships that broke down, even noting the social gaffes of Naismyth's uppity wife. He knew that the likelihood was that Paul couldn't change his ways. Then the end would have to come, and he wouldn't be able to recommend the man for any other job in Australia. That would be to do the dirt on his own people, the property owners. It would, in any case, be to the benefit of all if the Naismyths took the journey home again. And the ones who would benefit most would be themselves, or so Bill thought.

It was on the night that Betty put the final, finishing touches of polish to her article for the
Bulletin
competition that the Whitelaws at Fort George received a visitor. As the recession had slowly, painfully, begun to give way to slightly better times, the number of men and women roaming the outback in search of work, dole, or just a meal and a rough bed for the night had grown fewer. It was a while since Fort George had seen a sundowner, but it saw one that evening. The sun, in fact, had an hour or two of fierce assertion left in it and the temperature was in the high nineties when the man appeared. Jack Whitelaw had gone in Bill's car to Walgett, for important negotiations with his bank manager (another Mason). He was not yet back when a man sauntered down the road from Bundaroo and banged with his fist on the door—not threateningly, but just enough to make his presence known.

“Sure I was wonderin' whether you had a job of work for me, and a bite to eat in exchange,” he said when Dot Whitelaw opened the door. She frowned at the sight of him, but not discouragingly.

“Haven't you been here before, a year or two back?” she asked. “My husband had you mending some fences, let you sleep in the barn?”

“There now, he must have kept you away from me, for I never met you that time. I was wonderin' why I seemed to remember the property, but couldn't call to mind the charmin' lady of the place.”

Dot paused for a moment, then giggled.

“There's no charming ladies in this part of the globe! But come on in. I think my husband must have eaten in Walgett, so there's a bit of Irish stew going begging. I wouldn't know about work. That's for Jack to say.” She ushered him through. “But I can see you don't go hungry, work or no work.”

Poor as they were, her instinct was to share at least some small portion with those less fortunate. And she was always grateful for company, whatever shape it took. They were in the kitchen now, where they ate most of their meals, and she sat him down at the table.

“Well now, isn't this cozy—and tasteful at the same time,” said the sundowner, looking around him. He was a man of medium height and sandy hair, with a good-humored face, bearded, and with a sparkle in his eye. But for his clothes and ragged pack one might assume he was a person living the best possible kind of life. Betty had come out of her bedroom carrying Ollie and stood in the doorway watching the newcomer as if she were a bemused five-year-old.

Dot had been ladling food from three large saucepans on the range. She put the plate down in front of him and sat at the other end of the table. It seemed an age since she had had a conversation with someone she didn't know.

“Now isn't that the best Irish stew I've had since I left me native shores.”

“I think Jack took a plate of stew to you in the barn when you were here before,” said Dorothy.

“Did he now? Then your cookin' just gets better and better!”

Dot giggled again.

“I think you remember perfectly well coming here before,” she said. “We do try to be hospitable to…people like you.”

“Sure an' I know you do. We men of the road, we do remember folks who are good to us, but we don't bring it up, in case they think we're going to make a habit of callin'. For myself, I just put on a friendly face, because that's what folk like to see, and where's the harm in that?”

“Is that why you put on an Irish accent too?” asked Betty. The man stopped in his tracks.

“Sure that's a razor-sharp mind the young one there has.”

“Not much gets past our Betty.”

“Joey O'Hara at school has an Irish father, and your accent doesn't sound right,” explained Betty. “I didn't hear you talk when you were here before, because me and Mum just watched you and Dad from the window.”

“Then like I said it's a clever soul your dad is, if he keeps you both locked away, because it's a gracious lady you have for a mother, and you'll be a bobby-dazzler breakin' men's hearts in a few years' time, that you will.” He paused again in his eating, which was as enthusiastic as good table manners would allow. Then he went on in an ordinary voice. “I'm sorry for the accent. I do it all the time when I'm with strangers, and it becomes second nature. People do like it. Most Australians have a relative who's Irish, and as often as not they're favorites—an uncle who's a bit of a card, or a gentle sort of fellow who's in the church. So it…works.”

“How did you come to…do what you do? Did you lose your job?”

“Not as such, no. The fact is, I went to war.”

“Jack went to war too,” put in Dot. “My husband.”

“I know. I remember him telling me. He was under Monash, but he didn't get there till sixteen. I—mad bastard that I was—worked my passage to England as soon as the war broke out, and I was in France by late November. I dunno what made me do it. I had a brute of a father, but I really went from the frying pan to the fire…You'll know from your man that it's not a thing to be talked about…Like a hellish dream…It took all of us different. When your man came back he obviously wanted to settle down, put it behind him, get back to normal. That meant having a family, being his own boss. I tried normal, but it didn't work for me: job, promotion, house, children—I couldn't face getting into that kind of rut. It was all a cheat, a con, from my point of view. And that's why I'm a sundowner, young lady. The only thing that's real for me is where my next meal is coming from, and where I lay my bed. That's all my poor brain can cope with.”

Betty nodded. The man shook off his mood in a moment.

“And you meet some types on the road, I can tell you. Last week in Moree I was talking to some children in a little park near the church there, telling them stories of the road, of some of the dogs travelers have, some of the wild animals that make friends with us (I made a lot of that up, but the littlies loved it), and we were having a famous time, and the kiddies were laughing and gurgling, when up comes this police constable—seventeen stones if he's an ounce, all beer belly and blubber, and he says, ‘Here, you can't entertain in a public place without a license!' ”

“Entertain,” said Betty, outraged. “Just telling stories to children?”

“You hit the nail on the head, young lady. He has his brains in his boots, that one. So I said to him, ‘I might need a license if I were collecting money, but how much do you think I could get from this lot? A couple of farthings at the most, and then I'd give it back to them because I don't rob wee things like they are.' Anyway, he wouldn't see reason, and he tried to break up the meeting or move us on, and the children got so angry, because I'd never finished a story I was telling them about being woken up by a goanna and a funnel-web spider having an argument about which was the uglier, so things started to get nasty—not
really
nasty, you know, but funny nasty, because they were angry kids, even though the eldest was no more than seven, and there was this great fat representative of law and order—”

The sundowner was interrupted by the sound of the door opening and Betty's father coming home. One look at his face told the women that the talk with the bank manager had gone well.

“Well, if it isn't Al Cousens!” said Jack Whitelaw, coming into the kitchen. “Have your travels brought you here again?”

It was typical of Betty's father that he'd found out the sundowner's name on his last visit, and remembered it until this one. He sat down and they began talking about the year that had just passed. Betty, a child again, was bursting with a natural storyteller's curiosity.