A River Town (9 page)

TWO DOZEN DELIVERIES to make now.

Coming out of Mrs. Curran’s in River Street with the empty butter box he’d delivered goods in, he spotted old Dwyer on his horse, with the hessian saddlebags hung over its neck crammed with
Chronicles
. He saw women come to front fences and buy. And as he delivered goods further up the hill, he found that women smiled as they handed their money over for the delivered biscuits and treacle, sugar and tea. From the back doors, he saw the
Chronicle
was as often as not opened on their kitchen tables. One of his customers told him, “You’re a really decent chap, Mr. Shea.” Their cash had no reluctance to it today. None of them mentioned the scandalous prices of things. The few who asked for a week’s credit seemed ashamed to do it.

One of life’s mysteries. That ordinary people paid well, and the bloody bush aristocrats with their Tradesman’s Entrances drained credit to its limit. Even Ernie and Winnie Malcolm who were so keen to nominate him for valour.

Back at last to the junction of Belgrave and Smith, Pee Dee restive, himself yearning for black tea. He spotted his son Johnny swimming like a water rat around the pylons of the unbuilt bridge. The
Argus
and the
Chronicle
went to some lengths to explain to ratepayers that the most important work was the sinking of foundations, using a huge diving bell lowered by crane from a lighter. Men from Sydney who were used to that sort of work stood in that
bubble of air at the bottom of the green river and worked the digging and dredging machinery and sank the pylons in place. These men took their butter and chops at Allen’s Boarding House in East, as if they were ordinary fellows engaged in ordinary work. Johnny hung round them if given a whisper of encouragement.

Tim got down from the cart on the embankment just past the store, and held Pee Dee’s head and called for his son. “Come out now. Don’t be a town ruffian. Come out!”

The child sat bolt upright in the water, like a bloody weasel. Then he swam to shore and found his shirt. The trousers he’d swum in were all discoloured with the river’s alluvium, the rich soil which it picked up upstream. Kitty didn’t seem to mind any of this, or the idea of a six-year-old swimming about in that massive river.

“You aren’t cold?” he asked the boy.

The boy said, “No.”

Tim shook him by the shoulder. “You are to keep out of the river, sir. I’ll give you a bloody great whack.”

“That’s right,” said the boy. He mimed a bloody great whack with one open hand against the other.

“It won’t be as funny when it happens,” said Tim. “Go to the back of the house and dry. Don’t come into the store in that condition.”

“Whatever you say,” said the boy.

He didn’t sound like his parents. It was as if the sun had got inside his nose and throat and dried all the cords. His
say
sounded like
sigh
. This is what it is to be an emigrant. Your children won’t speak like you. He’d never thought of it till it happened.

As a consolation, he took the boy by the hand and together they led Pee Dee and the cart around the back.

When he came into the store, Kitty looked up from the
Chronicle
and smiled at him.

“So you
are
a hero, darling Tim.”

“You shouldn’t believe it. I collected over twenty-three shillings this morning.”

“Just as well since we owe the wholesalers twenty-seven. This Bandy Habash is a good talker, isn’t he? Speaks so highly of you.”

“I wonder where he thinks he gets the right from?”

“Well,” she said, reaching for his upper arm. “You are what is reported,
you are.
”

“Kitty, why don’t you get some strong tea and have a rest?”

She was willing to do it. He cried after her, “I just tore that bloody rascal Johnny out of the river!”

Going, she murmured, “That’s him. He isn’t frightened of a thing in the known world, the little bugger …”

Now he was able to read the paper himself.

The Rochester accident was then detailed.

“Mr. Timothy Shea, grocer of Belgrave Street, and Mr. Bandy Habash, hawker of West Kempsey, had been alerted to the accident by Lucy Rochester, and had galloped together to O’Riordan’s in Glenrock where they had found … Mr. Bandy Habash has since visited the offices of the
Chronicle
to praise the behaviour of Mr. Timothy Shea … carried the remains of the unfortunate Mr. Rochester on the back of his horse …”

But it was the front. And Albert’s back visible all the way.

“… to the Macleay District Hospital … took in the two unfortunate orphans until suitable places … Mr. Habash’s account of Mr. Shea’s attempts to revive the unfortunate Mr. Rochester have interested the Secretary of the Macleay Valley Branch of the Royal Humane Society, Mr. E. V. Malcolm, who has forwarded to Sydney a recommendation that Mr. Shea’s acts of courage and generosity be recognised by an award.”

His client, Ernie Malcolm, carried on his fob watch chain the bright medallions of at least a dozen civic bodies: Patriotic Fund, Shipwreck Society, Empire Day Committee, Australian Wesleyan Missionary Society, the Australian National Defence League, the Free Trade Association, the New South Wales Typographical Association, the Christian Endeavour Union, the New South Wales Cricket Association. A correspondent of all of them, a convenor of meetings to assess public interest. On top of that an attender of Masonic meetings at the Good Templars. A life spent all in public, sometimes with lovely, tall, fine-drawn Winnie Malcolm beside him, but frequently not. A woman made for private adoration married to a fellow always on a rostrum or at a committee table.

And cracked about bravery and the Humane Society. Inspector of courage and acts of mercy. He had talked in the past as if he saw the Macleay as some valley of pre-eminent valour. Where that impulse came from Tim couldn’t understand, since he seemed an ordinary fellow, a man designed for homely things. It frightened Tim to be Ernie’s target. It was a sign of the disorder he had sensed as Missy’s slaughterers were led to Central wharf.

After Anniversary Day his dreams grew more arduous, more stubborn. Threw their shadow too into the light of morning. Constant presences: Albert for a bloody but ordinary start. But more, more present was Missy. She had so quietly burrowed into his head, like an Oriental bug one heard of in the
Argus
, which sent planters in Malaya screaming out into the jungle.

A dream recurred set aboard the
Burrawong
—a very bright day, and threatening the way Australian brightness can be. An awful quantity of azure and ozone all around this boat which in different years had brought him and Kitty to the Macleay. Tim at the gunwale and the girl, Hanney’s Missy, indefinitely dressed in blackish clothes, approached him and pointed downwards into the water, where a very clearly perceived porpoise was rippling like silk in the water.

She said, “The captain tells me it’s the slops they follow us for. But no. They prefer the company of humans.”

She had some English country accent. That was not unexpected.

Waking, he took account of all the men of the Macleay. Timber-getters and small farmers from far up the river. The sort of places where mountains began to squeeze the valley in. Fellows from Taylor’s Arm, Hickey’s Creek, from Nulla Nulla, Five Day, Stockyard, Kookaburra and Mount Banda Banda. They lived in slab huts. They cut railway sleepers for shipment to Sydney on
Burrawong
. They brought great thews of cedar to town on jinkers dragged by teams of bullocks. Or else their blackbutt planking, cut to provide the decking of the future Kempsey bridge. Perhaps only once every two or three months did these men come to town to meet a woman.

A usual visit: they would park their drays on the river bank, turn
in their orders for bacon, split peas, tea and sugar (and even sometimes soap), and then go to the Commercial or the Royal or Kelty’s and get drunk. Tim would fill their orders, place each one in the appropriate dray, and then late, late at night, when he and Kitty were asleep, the bachelor owners of the drays would come out, haranguing their own phantoms, would generally take the right vehicle, and head off up the river. Out of the dark streets into the sadder darkness of the bush. Sometimes they fell from the wagon and were found the next morning sleeping on some embankment as their horse cropped grass nearby. Sometimes they simply pitched themselves backwards into the tray of the wagon and slept with the reins in their hands. The sober horses knew the way to whatever far-off acreage these fellows were working.

None of these men from the bush, owners of knowledgeable horses, could be imagined as the lover of Hanney’s fine-faced girl. Townsmen though. Some townsman then. Some townsman was it.

One humbler townsman of his acquaintance came to the store at the hottest hour of the afternoon. Wooderson. With whom Tim had shared a dinghy in the great flood, when they were very young and husky.

Wooderson said, “Tim, I read of your heroism. Bloody good!”

The humid air filled up again with this silly, vaporous rumour from bloody Habash.

“It’s all a put-up.”

Big Wooderson laughed. He still worked as a haulier, was easy with life, uninflamed by ambitions. An Australian. Very suntanned and muscular, and his big hands were a map of small, hurtful accidents to do with loading and unloading wagons.

“And I remembered anyhow, Tim, as I read it all. You were, I seem to remember, a first class rough batsman, a walloper. Hook shots I believe. Whack! There’s to be the Married versus Single Men Cricket game at Toorooka up the river. I’m the Marrieds’ captain. Clarrie Bertram’s got the damn meningitis. Would you join us at the wickets, son?”

Tim growled, “Never respected that bloody English-gentleman game.”

“I’ve heard that speech before,” said Wooderson, laughing.
“There’s a throwing at the stumps contest at lunchtime. Bob to enter. Three quid first prize.”

More than boarding school fees for a small orphan.

Wooderson said, “You’ve got a bloody good eye, Tim. The
Terara
will take us up to Toorooka for the game.”

“Quicker to bloody crawl there on hands and knee, wouldn’t it be?”

“Yes, but a steamer trip! Nothing like it for novelty. Bring Kitty and the kids, Tim. Lovely day.”

“I see that New South Wales has Victoria in great trouble at the Sydney Cricket Ground,” said Tim, finding the place in the
Chronicle
. New South Wales First Innings, 7–385, Victoria 8–187. Put the bloody Victorians in their place! Sydney people liked to do that.

“Clyde’s done the damage,” Tim remarked further. “Took 6 wickets for 37 runs.”

“Ah,” said Wooderson. “An English game eh, Tim? Except when New South Wales is dishing Victoria.”

Tim grinned behind his moustache. “Go to buggery, Wooderson. But I will play for you if you really require it.”

Wooderson was lucky to get him at the right hour. The secret truth was that the good fellowship was mere playing at fraternity. Were grocery stores and stock agencies and lawyers’ offices really run according to the laws of social cricket, where to lose your wicket in a comic runout could actually increase your social standing, if you took it well and joined in the laughter? Whereas to lose at commerce … another matter utterly.

He would rather read the latest Victor Daley poem in the
Bulletin
under the peppertree than go out pretending to love the ten other cricketers on his side, and—over beer—the eleven opponents. The Singles. What a cracked concept to base teams on!

All this solemnity he got from his own father Jeremiah, who’d always mistrusted over-easy sociability. Jerry Shea, small landholder of great style. Too educated for the purposes of a 15-acre farm and 7 pigs. Too literary to be a part-time clerk. He’d loved the English writers—Hood and Lamb and Hazlitt and Pope—and neglected his native Gaelic. He’d spent just one charity term with the Jesuits in Mallow and they’d talked him into betting definitely on English, as if that could give him the place he’d wanted in the
world. It was another instance: no one connived at their own destruction the way the Irish did. And yet the newspapers cast them as totally dangerous to others. The thousands of the poor Paddy bastards who were perishing at Spionkopf and other Cape Colony and Natal battlefields weren’t dangerous to anyone any more. But they got little bloody credit for it.

As he contemplated the impending cricket match at Toorooka with these thoughts, an astonishing realisation struck him. I am playing in Marrieds versus Singles from some mongrel of an idea that the girl’s lover might be a square leg or in the covers or at mid-wicket.

Wooderson was watching him, looking amused.

“Have you seen that blackguard Habash on your route?” Tim asked to distract himself. “The son. The younger one.”

Wooderson grinned. “The one with the horses. The reckless rider?”

“That’s the blackguard.”

“He’s working out at Pola Creek, I believe.” Wooderson really started to laugh now. “I take it you want to thank him.”

“Thank the bastard? It’s more murder.”