A Woman of the Inner Sea (14 page)

The man who’d been everywhere had a boy at his left side, a very tall boy with a Celtic smudge of a face. Those faces you saw now mainly and only in bush towns. A distillation of Connemara or the Highlands. Such a face had been sent into the bush in the nineteenth century, not always voluntarily, and had remained there in its original form, a survival, an ancient visage. You wouldn’t see a better face on fishermen in the outer Hebrides.

There were also two immeasurably old and yet not quite aged men, one on the corner of the bar, one where its shorter arm met the wall. This second one sat under a plaque which said,
Placed here by Murchison’s Railway Hotel Social Club in memory of Bert (Stumpy) Hogan, 1923–1989. Stumpy’s Corner
.

These two old men wore hats, just as the appointed thin man, the smartalec about places, did. The one at the bar corner—the Cornerman—had what Kate thought of as a
quick
face, the way a friendly dog who wants to be involved in human games has a quick face, sifting conversations for the word which will let him in, invite him to stand on his hind legs.

By contrast, it was clearly the appointed task of the man under
Stumpy Hogan’s memorial plaque—the Plaqueman—to know that though he had perhaps six and a half decades’ vivid experience to exploit if called on, he would fail to be asked. He would die with all that eager material still in his veins.

For the pyramid of a man by the back door and the whippet in the stained hat were the two who controlled the traffic of discourse here. Catalyzed by Jack Murchison, they would do it in a leisurely but utterly authoritative way.

The Plaqueman understood this exquisitely, and in a more refined version of the universe would have passed it on to the Cornerman whose ears twitched so much like a willing hound’s. But that was the rule too. You didn’t pass it on. You had too much bloody pride.

So part of the special tension of the bar was that the two old men could have been so easily won. A crumb would have done it. The making of a minute space in a conversation. That could not happen though. For the New South Wales Liquor Licensing Board had given Jack his license for liquor, not a license to let eagerness be satisfied or diffused. The kindly-looking pyramid of a man would have lightly done it for the two older ones if it hadn’t been for the operation of such rules of the universe.

Kate was astounded and reassured to know that since the first fermenting and distilling gods there’d always been such arrangements as these. A man was given his license and control of the liquors on which the deities had breathed, and all these acolytes arose from nowhere, at a summons they couldn’t even hear, and came in to fulfill fragments of the liturgy, altering their dreams as they went by passing the brown fluid through their brains.

Jack, she thought, was a very lucky man. Without trying and because it was appointed, he had acquired regulars. They all interested her, including the two old men you weren’t meant to talk to.

As Jack introduced her to the till, she could feel the whippet’s eyes on her. He was the one who would make the prescribed jokes, the ones which weren’t even funny.

—Got a new apprentice there, Jack? Bloody sight prettier than the last one.

—This button is for a middy, Jack showed her, standing before the cash register. This is for a schooner. You press this one for a nip of spirits—vodka, rum, whiskey. In a perfect bloody world, of
course, you’d charge what each nip was worth, because everyone knows whiskey, vodka, gin and rum are all different prices. But the Railway Hotel is an imperfect bloody world, and you can’t get staff anymore who’ll keep different prices in their heads. The age of literacy is bloody dead and gone out here. Now peanuts and every other sort of rubbish we’ve got for sale, that’s all the same price too. See the peanuts button? That’s what you hit.

He cleared the cash register so she could do a few trial runs. All conversation had stopped, she was aware. Everyone was intent on Jack’s instruction and trying to read its effect on her, above all waiting for some hilarious error.

—Now the taps, said Jack. Old and New and Foster’s. Bulk of the trade. Guts of the business. Watch my wrist.

He took out a schooner glass from a tray of unused glasses and flourished it before her as if he might be about to make it disappear.

—All in the wrist. The big aim in life is the two-pour schooner. No beer lost through the drip tray, nice head, beautiful.

And so he demonstrated, exactly by description. One long pour, flicking the beer tap handle with a genuine elegance. Panache. It filled her with a kind of pleasure, one appropriate to the plain planet where she now lived. This wrist stuff was exquisite.

A second, shorter, sharper pour, and there was the completed column of beer, carrying the right head. You had to be careful, she knew, about heads of beer. What was normal and permitted in other nations was grounds for assault or the ruination of a pub’s repute in Australia. The right head was a birthright. It applauded the drinker’s existence and manhood.

She studied what Jack did, keeping in her mind the wrist motion. Flick, flick.

—Beautiful, said Jack, putting the perfect flute of beer on the bar. The fat man clapped. He was permitted. The eager old man laughed at the clapping. That was permitted and ignored.

Introductions now, in prodigal order. The large pyramidal man by the back wall was Jelly. Jelly’s brown eyes, she noticed, were by nature genial, despite the seemingly cruel nickname.

But then Jack said, Nothing to do with the size of the bastard.

And Jelly laughed, hugging the joke to himself.

—He’s a bloody dynamiter. Jelly for gelignite. This is Kate, Jelly.

—Okay, love. Welcome.

Jack had turned to the whippet by now.

—This is Guthega. Don’t pour him a drink unless you’ve already got the bloody money in the till …

—That’s all right with you, you avaricious bastard, the whippet cried. There used to be a bloody miserable publican like you in Canowindra. Ran him out of bloody town. Will you introduce my poor bloody son or what?

The whippet had gestured toward the boy with the Celtic blur of a face.

—I was getting to your son. Best bloody thing you ever had anything to do with. Though if you ask me, it was the shearer’s cook. Kate, this is Guthega’s son Noel.

The tall boy, so much lankier than his father, put his hand out for Kate to shake. Guthega didn’t like that.

—Don’t shake hands with a woman, bugger it Noel! Jesus, she’s not some bloody feminist on the High Court of Australia or something!

So everyone laughed at the boy, who was genuinely uneasy. Though Kate kept a smile to herself, it was more because she had found a town where people still called their children Noel. Again, this seemed as wonderful as she could expect. A return to simple elements.

Jelly had to tell her something as soon as he could manage to swallow his merely dutiful laughter. She could see by the way his hands chopped at the surface of the bar.

—Noel is the Australian champion shearer. You wouldn’t believe it. But honestly. Australian champion. With a father like that. Bloody dyslexic, hopeless father. So, you could of shook the hand of an Aussie champ.

Noel shifted from foot to foot. It was appropriate for Noel’s type that they be discomfited while people chatted about their glory.

—Wide comb, miss, said Noel. Not narrow comb, like in the old days.

—Wide comb, Guthega repeated. Not like the old days. Bloody scabby wide comb shears the bloody graziers forced on us. And now here’s my son the champion of the wide bloody comb. His mother and I can’t hold our heads up.

Guthega had drunk too much. His son, the wide comb champion, hadn’t. Kate could hear Mrs. Guthega’s absent voice.

—You stick with your father and get him home okay!

Jack next told her the names of the two old men, the Cornerman and the Plaqueman. The one in the corner took it eagerly. The other with a small, contemptuous rearing of the head. He and Kate understood they had no need of each other’s names. A woman who had lost hold of both her children wasn’t going to hold on to two names like that.

But the Cornerman didn’t know it. Without reason, he expected immediate friendship and banter. He would say, Kate! And expect to hear his name spoken in return. Like the kangaroo in Volume 13, just because he had had a convivial mother, he still believed, in his antique folly, that the world would come his way.

The man in the overalls had already left by now.

Since there was nothing more to be learned, Kate said good night in a general sort of way. She was aware that Jelly’s eyes followed her in exactly the right manner: lustrous with goodwill. But not expecting anything.

Stupid Guthega though, the champ’s father, thought he had a chance.

F
OR A TIME, she could tell, she made a little difference to business. Teachers from the Captain John Eglington High School and accountants from the banks: National, Westpac, State, came in to see her for novelty’s sake. The Escapees asked her to a Wednesday night party at a pub further up the Eglington Highway. They could not understand that she did not need another pub, except to get away from them. Apart from them, the Railway was the idea she had been in search of.

A few attempted seductions but were easily rebuffed: a motor mechanic asked her would she like to drive out to Wrangle Reserve with him after closing, just to see the billabongs under the moon. It was lovely out there, he told her. A bookkeeper at the stock and station agent’s wondered would she like to go and see the French play Australia at Wagga.

—A long drive and it’ll be bloody cold, he told her as if this added allurement.

At last, muttering about her frigidity, the unusual welter of business died away.

In the mornings she ate bacon, not bothering to separate the fat from the ocher kernels of meat. She had steak at lunch and tea time. With it she consumed slices of white bread laden with packs of cold butter. Woman of starch: woman of milk!

Jack took her room and board out of her modest weekly wage. It cost ninety dollars a week to stay at Murchison’s Railway Hotel and transmogrify yourself.

Yet the transformation did not always go smoothly. One morning, coming out into the brisk air which lay over inner Australia on such late autumn mornings, she heard through the kitchen window Jack and Connie debating her.

—I’m talking about
ordinary
friendliness.

—Bugger me, Connie, you were the one worried she was a tart!

—You don’t have to be a tart to be a bit more friendly. She’s scaring people off.

—That was all fake anyhow, love, all that extra business.

She could hear Jack making little squeaks of reason, of appeals for concession, with the corner of his mouth.

—Those blokes wouldn’t have lasted as customers, he said. Artificial.

—Didn’t look too damn artificial on the bank statements, said Connie, the frugal Greek. For who knew when the Turks would come and burn the village? Make business while you can.

—Listen darls, don’t say anything for Christ’s sake.

—She’s weird.

—Yeah, but she’s not dangerous is she?

Later in the kitchen, she peeled the potatoes which hefty Shirley would fry for dinner, and she let her eyes skid across the pages of newspapers. Sometimes her attention would hook on some little snag, a familiar name or an intimately known one.

But she did not let her eye rest long enough to encounter a cheap retelling of her own tale.

As she worked in the kitchen, scaling the bland vegetables over the generally bland newsprint, Connie set her a test.

—Jack and I are set to go to the Hereford Breeders’ ball. We were wondering whether you could baby-sit the kids?

Kate closed her eyes. She didn’t want these unnecessary tricks played on her.

—I’m not good at looking after children.

—D’you mean you’ll look after them on protest? Or you don’t want to look after them at all.

—No. I’m not good …

She was prepared to share the Railway Hotel with Connie’s children, but she did not talk to them and avoided remembering their names. They were there, like the Cornerman and the Plaqueman in the bar.

Knowing that what she’d said to Connie had endangered her, she went to find Jack in the darkened public bar, not yet open for business.

—Listen, Jack. I’ll do this whole shift.

He didn’t know what she meant. He frowned earnestly.

—I mean, ten in the morning until closing. The whole day.

—You’ll be buggered, love.

—I want to do some hard work. I’ll sleep better.

—I don’t know if I can afford you.

—Same pay. Same pay.

She wanted to fill the deserts of daytime with that simple wristwork. The two-pour schooner. Flick. Flick. Perfection.

—Listen … none of my business. But do you reckon you’re okay? Do you reckon you ought to see a doctor?

—I saw plenty when I was in hospital.

—Hospital?

—For my burns. Do you think I might be a danger to people?

—No, not that. No fear.

And Jack made the appeasing noises which he’d used earlier with Connie. The little squeaks of rational dialogue.

But Kate could see at once that it was not quite enough to be willing to pull perfect beers for twelve hours at a stretch. Or thirteen. As always, people weren’t satisfied that you did what they did. They wanted to see the wires and the struts.