Lantana Lane (10 page)

Mrs. Jackson decides, after a moment's thought, that this curious remark can only be attributed to a faulty command of English. She insists that Ken is far too fond of gambling—for say what you like, the Casket is gambling, and the number of tickets he takes is just terrible. Moreover, who should know better than the wife of a policeman how much trouble he causes in the Rothwell bars? Aunt Isabelle pishes, tushes, and protests that she does not concern herself with such piccadillies.

Mrs. Jackson then lowers her voice, and confides that although Ken tells her nothing of his manner of passing the time during his periodical absences in the city, things get around. She knows for a fact that he spends his money like water—receiving, she has been given to understand, enthusiastic co-operation from publicans, bookmakers and girls. Aunt Isabelle cackles, and cries : “Bravo!”

This does not surprise Mrs. Jackson at all, for her articles of faith are far more numerous than the thirty-nine prescribed, and among them is a conviction that the morals of the French are not what they should be; but she is annoyed. Therefore—well knowing just which criticism of Ken riles Aunt Isabelle most—she jerks her head towards the window facing the Lane, where there stands a contraption on wheels which is the apple of his eye, and goes by the name of Kelly.

This bomb is, like its owner, a bit of a larrikin, but by no means an anti-social one. It works hard while it is working and when it is not, loafs out on the side of the road, enjoying the heat on its paint, and peeling like a careless sun-bather. There is room for it under Ken's house, but he rarely bothers to put it there. It had a hood of sorts once, which vanished during a cyclone, so Ken took to throwing an old tarpaulin over it; but there was another blow the following year, and the tarp was never seen again, so now Kelly just takes the weather as it comes. It only does about ten miles to the gallon, because its petrol tank leaks, and so far Ken has not got around to having it mended; his bachelor existence allows him the little luxury of being feckless if he wants to. Its radiator leaks too, rather badly (you can always tell by a sinuous, wet streak in the dust when Kelly has been along the Lane ahead of you), but Ken carries a kerosene tin, and when he stops, he puts it under the leak, and when he is ready to start again he empties it back into the radiator, and this seems to work very well. It has no windshield, and no mudguards. A few folded sacks on the seat serve as upholstery. The glass is broken out of one headlamp, and the other does not function. Ken, while admitting that its steering-gear is a bit crook, and its engine a bit noisy, points out that it has never failed to start up, and get him where he wants to go. As he frequently says, it's game—and thus it has come to be known as Kelly, in tribute to the immortal Ned.

Mrs. Jackson, then, gives this object a contemptuous glance, closes her eyes for a moment as though she found the spectacle unendurably revolting, and proceeds to bait Aunt Isabelle thus:

“As for that . . . that
Thing
of his out there, the money he's wasted on it would have bought him a brand-new utility twice over. It's not that I'm one for show, Madam. I don't approve of ostentation. If someone offered me a Rolls-Royce to-morrow, I'd say : ‘No, thank you; our own nice little Holden's quite good enough for me.' But there are limits. It's a matter of self-respect, that's the way I look at it. That Thing's a laughing-stock. It's . . . it's
sordid,
that's what it is!”

Aunt Isabelle, whose bristles have been rising throughout this speech, says sharply : “Fiddlestooks I Sordid, you say, is it? Laughing-stock, you say? I have myself studied the machinery of Kelly in motion when Ken has opened the lid, and it moves to admiration. Why? I will tell you, for it is evident that you do not understand the qualities of this vehicle. It is not what-you-say mass-made on a row for the assemblage by a multitude of factory men who are thinking only that they must put the bits in fast, this bit, that bit, biff, baff, now the snatch, now the plug-sparkers, now the preferential, now the box of gears, now the pipes, clang, bang, it is all done and they may go home. In this way you may get your Holdens, but to get Kelly it has been the work of many years, it has been the labour of love to choose all these bits, one here, one there, and place them with care and judgment in positions the most advantageous. And for a result, this engine is of remarkable power, and will continue to propel the vehicle in such places where your Holdens would make what-you-say the sit-down-strike. And who then would be the laughing-stock—
hein
?”

Mrs. Jackson looks pained, and says in a tone of patient for-bearance:

“I'm not saying the thing doesn't
go
—more's the pity. I'm only saying it's very wrong of Ken—very wrong and foolish—to squander so much money on it.”

Aunt Isabelle enquires warmly:

“And if a man may not squander money upon the object of his love—for he loves this Kelly dearly, and with reason—pray, upon what may he squander it?”

“The way I look at it,” retorts Mrs. Jackson, pursing her lips, “it's wrong to squander money at all. These days the young have no idea of Thrift. But now that you bring up the subject of . . . er . . . the affections, let me tell you his wife left him mainly because she couldn't stand the Thing, and the way he fussed over it. She said it made her look silly to the neighbours when he paid it far more notice than he ever paid her.”

Aunt Isabelle eloquently lifts her shoulders, her hands and her eyebrows.
Sans doute,
she observes, this young woman had not yet learned that all husbands must be permitted their playthings. It is to be expected by any wife that the ardent attentions lavished upon her during the period of courtship, will quickly be transferred, after marriage, to some other object, person or pursuit. And is this a cause for a wife to shed tears?
Pas du tout!
It is in the course of nature. For her part, she was well pleased to be spared the company and the conversation of the late M. Dufour, for these, particularly during his later years, were of a tediousness altogether insufferable, and must have driven his unhappy
belle amie
almost to distraction.

Mrs. Jackson finds her opinion of French morals confirmed by all this, and is glad that her own husband is not present to hear it. But since they have now arrived at the topic of Ken's love-life, there is tacit agreement between them that the time for squabbling is over; they therefore fill their cups again, and settle down cosily to plot his recapture.

It must have been remarked by everyone that the sight of an unattached young man invariably gives rise to romantic speculation in the minds of the neighbours. Although Aunt Isabelle and Mrs. Jackson devote more time, thought and subtle machination to the problem of Ken's single state than do the rest of us, we all hope to find a nice girl for him some day. But it is a discouraging business, for when we do discover a promising specimen, we usually learn that he has already discovered her for himself, and passed on to someone else.

The experience of history should prepare us for the fact that schoolgirls become marriageable maidens—but the metamorphosis never fails to take us by surprise; so we were much astonished to wake up one morning and observe that EElaine Bell had—apparently overnight—been transformed from a somewhat lumpy adolescent into a young woman whose curves, though still on the generous side, were all in the right places. As soon as we had accustomed ourselves to this miracle, we naturally thought of Ken—but after thinking for only a moment, we looked dubious, and shook our heads.

Not that there was a thing to be said against EElaine; far from it. She is her mother's daughter—tall, buxom, comely, healthy, modest, virtuous, skilled in all the domestic arts, an expert case-maker, an accomplished packer, and wonderful with children. But we just felt, somehow, that she was not Ken's cup of tea. Of course Aunt Isabelle and Mrs. Jackson, who leave no stone unturned, examined her qualifications very narrowly; but in the end they shook their heads too. Mrs. Jackson said regretfully that she was a dear, good, home girl, and an example to all the other girls of the district with her interest in the Girl Guides and her Sunday School class; but she was not the sort Ken had ever taken to, though he might have done better if he had. Aunt Isabelle threw up her hands and invited all the world to look at the unfortunate child's clothes, for one must march with the times, isn't it, and such extreme decorum could not be expected to appeal to Ken, who was of the type lively and unconventional; nor could he possibly be allured by her manner or her conversation, for a man of this kind naturally prefers the company of a girl who comports herself a little
en coquette
—not shamelessly, you understand, but with the wit and merriment, the inviting glance, the pout, the downcast eyes, the playful
badinage.
Alas, it could not be denied that EElaine was quite without facility in such innocent arts.

We were just resigning ourselves to this disappointment when Myra Dawson's niece came to stay with her, and we all sat up, and said : “
Ah-ha
!”This young lady has large, blue eyes, two dimples, a silvery giggle and admirable contours. Her name is Maud, and it is an appropriate one in so far as she possesses a little head sunning over with curls, but her features are pert rather than regular, and there is nothing icy about her. We decided unanimously that this was just the kind of cuddlesome armful a bloke like Ken would appreciate, and he was just the kind of bloke into whose arms such an armful would be happy to fall.

Sure enough, it was noticed that he had occasion to drop in at the Dawsons' very frequently while she was there. Aunt Isabelle reported that one morning when she chanced to be promenading herself along the Lane, she observed him in Aub's packing-shed, teaching Maud to pack pines. (“. . . and for this occasion she has made the
toilette,
you may believe me—the shorts very short, the jumper fitting close, the white sandals, the varnish on her toenails, the blue ribbon in her hair—oh, la-la, she knows her potatoes, that one! And across the Lane the poor EElaine is packing with her brothers, in an old frock the most deplorable, with a sack tied about her waist for an apron, I swear it, and on her head that straw hat with holes, and on her feet the gum-boots! . . .”)

We had plenty of opportunities to observe Maud's toilettes, and their effect upon Ken, for she paid several more visits to her aunt, and he was always most attentive. Everyone expected an interesting announcement any day, and prepared to receive it with exclamations of delighted amazement. But no announcement was made. Mrs. Jackson dropped what she described as a few tactful hints to Ken, and Aunt Isabelle, without bothering about tact at all, sooled him on as hard as she could; but he only grinned, and replied with his favourite phrase : “What's the hurry?”

So while Aunt Isabelle and Mrs. Jackson sip their tea, they discuss the news that Myra is expecting Maud again at Easter, and they have much to say upon the probable outcome of this visit. They confess that their hopes are high. Though neither is entirely satisfied with Maud, they both allow that she will do. Mrs. Jackson thinks that she could with advantage wear more upon her shapely body, and Aunt Isabelle thinks that she could with advantage have more inside her curly head; but Aunt Isabelle meets Mrs. Jackson's objection by pointing out that she will soon cover her legs when she starts picking pineapples, and Mrs. Jackson dismisses Aunt Isabelle's with the remark that a lot of intellect is not needed in a farmer's wife. They finally agree that one must not expect perfection; that Maud is by far the most promising candidate who has yet appeared; and that matters will soon be brought to a happy conclusion. For when a young man has a young girl like that staying just across the road from him, there comes into operation a powerful force which Mrs. Jackson calls propinquity, and Aunt Isabelle calls sex.

Having settled all this, and drunk the teapot dry, they bring their conference to a close, and when Aunt Isabelle rises to take her leave, Mrs. Jackson escorts her to the gate. From here they can see a bit of the Bells' backyard, where EElaine is pegging out twenty-two shirts on the line, so they wave to her kindly, and she waves back.

“Such a dear, home girl!” says Mrs. Jackson.

“Ah, that hat!” sighs Aunt Isabelle. “What a disaster!”

She shakes her head sadly as she bustles off down the Lane with Jake prancing at her heels. She hopes EElaine may find a husband some day—a worthy, sober man of mature years, a widower, perhaps, with several children—who will treat her kindly, and not care about the glamour.

with Special Reference to the Habits and Characteristics of
Ananas comosus
and
Lantana camara
and an Examination of their Economic and Psychological Effect upon Homo Sapiens

I
N THIS
district it may be said with little exaggeration that if you are not looking at pineapples, you are looking at lantana; nor can it be denied that the general aspect of the landscape is extremely pleasing to the eye. Ruskin has told us that contrast, while increasing the splendour of beauty, disturbs its influence, and if this be so, we may confidently state that the juxtaposition of pineapples and lantana produces a type of beauty unequalled both for splendour and disturbance.

Philosophers may ask whether the beauty which induces a mood of serenity is preferable to the agitating kind; it is a nice metaphysical point, but one which rarely engages the attention of farmers, so we need not pursue it here. Of course they cannot fail to observe the remarkable contrast between these two predominant forms of vegetation, and there is ample evidence that the sight of either disturbs them, but the reason for this is probably concerned less with æsthetics than with economics. It was all very well for Mr. Crabb (who, we dare swear, never brushed a patch of lantana in his life, nor chipped a row of pineapples, but merely sat comfortably in his study playing with Synonyms), to point out that contrast, since it heightens the effect of opposite qualities which show, nevertheless, a likeness in degree, is of great utility among poets; and no doubt poets have achieved some of their finest passages by skilfully setting against each other the fire and the frying-pan, the pot and the kettle, the devil and the deep blue sea. But the farmer, when he contrasts the control of lantana with the control of pineapples, is merely at a loss to know which imposes the greater burden upon his weary flesh, and his groaning spirit.

In our dealings with the vegetable kingdom we are apt to betray the same fallacious tendency which manifests itself in our attempts to divide our fellow men neatly into Goodies and Baddies. There are, we declare, Plants and Weeds—the quietest, most modest and inoffensive little number being a Weed if we have no use for it, and the thorniest, greediest and most troublesome rampager a Plant if it yields us something for our stomachs or our eyes.

Lantana is generally termed a Weed. We go further, hereabouts, and call it a Pest, to say nothing of less printable names. But in fact it is not altogether useless, and it is not so much wicked as crazy. It preserves, through all its misdemeanours, a kind of feckless innocence which, while often inducing extreme exasperation, still disarms hostility. We have become used to it—as those who work in lunatic asylums become used to mental aberration. Other weeds, such as Noogoora burr, Cobblers' Pegs, Crowsfoot, Groundsel and Stinking Roger, are systematic and purposeful enemies—Napoleons and Hitlers of the vegetable world, shameless aggressors bent upon territorial conquest; but the lantana, poor fool, is not really greedy for
lebensraum.
Like an amiable, gangling half-wit who, without the slightest intention of incommoding anyone, gets under everyone's feet, it simply keeps alive, and grows.

And how it grows! Nature—so neat and ingenious at devising forms, patterns and routines—seems here to have become bored with one of her creations; to have informed it with life, and then left it to its own devices. The result—as one might expect—is frightful.

Other plants and weeds, endowed with a master plan providing that the growth of one part shall contribute, in conjunction with that of others, to a final harmony of shape and function, understand exactly what is expected of them, and address themselves without pause or hesitation to the achievement of their task. But a glance is enough to betray the sad fact that one stem of the lantana knows not what the others are doing; each sprouts upwards, downward or sideways at will, guided only by an eager, blundering vitality, a fervent, planless exuberance, a kind of anarchic zeal.

We have used the word “stem”—but surely we mean “branch”? Or do we? . . . Does this shrub (or should we say creeper? . . .) consist of a great many stems and no branches, or a great many branches and no stem? A stem—so we understand—is the ascending axis of a plant in contradistinction to its descending axis, or root; and a branch—if we have been properly informed—is that part which grows out of the stem. This definition may enable us to identify those stems which, having emerged from the earth directly above their descending axis, steadily and without further ado concentrate upon the business of ascent, putting forth boughs and branches as they go; but it is no help at all with lantana. For although lantana certainly ascends (and to prodigious heights), it can hardly be said to grow upwards. It achieves, rather, what we might at first be tempted to describe as an act of levitation, though closer research reveals that the visible mass does rest upon an invisible foundation; and it is here, of course, that we must seek the answers to our questions.

One's sensations, while crawling into the lantana's nether layers must markedly resemble those of a psychiatrist groping his way into the twilight of the unconscious, Great Heavens, what a mess! This demented confusion of naked growth cannot but suggest the tortured complexities of obscure, Freudian urges. Here is activity without discipline or direction, an aimless rampancy of pullulation expressing itself in mad angles and frenzied excursions, senseless entwinings and interfacings, wild sallies and irrational recoils, brusque deviations, and long, random wanderings. The light is dim, and faintly green. The still air smells of secrecy, and through it the dead leaves softly fall and fall like yesterdays. Nowhere is any system discernible, nor any hint that the monstrous vigour of this afflicted weed is governed by a law.

Crawl and peer as we will, we can discover nothing which suggests an ascending axis. Here, indeed, is something which, from its superior girth, we might suppose to be a stem, but it is proceeding parallel to the ground, and—so far as our eye can follow it—betrays no inclination to ascend. From it there burst at intervals things which may possibly be branches, though some shoot skyward, some seem bent upon plunging into the earth, and others vanish horizontally in different directions; and from all these there sprout, in turn, other growths whose behaviour is equally eccentric, and from these still others, and from these . . .

Now wait a minute. Let us keep calm, and classify these things. The biggest is the stem; the things that shoot from it are the boughs; the things that shoot from the boughs are the branches. . . . But no; we recall the dictum that a branch is thinner than a bough, and thicker than a twig, shoot or spray, and the evidence of our eyes compels us to admit that these cannot be twigs after all, for they are in some cases thicker than the branches which, in any case, cannot be branches because they are in some cases thicker than the boughs. . . .

Enough. What's in a name? We shall employ them all indiscriminately—stem, stalk, bough, branch, limb, twig and even peduncle. Only let us get out of this; only let us rediscover sanity and sunlight; only let us look again at a tree, a thistle, a clover-leaf, a cabbage—anything which comports itself with purpose and precision, anything which knows its own shape, and sticks to it. Shaken and defeated, we retire backwards on all-fours, emerging at last to stare up at the green crown of that hidden underworld. And from here we cannot fail to see that the unfortunate weed is really trying hard to be normal. It wears its veneer of leaves brightly, with an artless pride. As a simpleton apeing the labours of his rational associates may diligently perform absurdities, and invite applause the while, with beaming smiles—so this dim-witted clutter of vegetation zealously persists in the endless task of piling itself upon itself, and ingratiatingly adorns its gawky dishevelment with a peppering of silly little flowers.

But the penalties of stupidity are, alas, no lighter than those of wickedness. If lantana had the sense to stick to the boundaries, it might thrive for ever unmolested. But this it will not do, and when it encroaches too much, the tolerance of the farmers deserts them, and they take to it with brush-hooks.

Since anarchy begets anarchy, this operation proceeds without method or finesse. The blows by which an axeman performs execution on a tree fall with a grim and solemn rhythm; those of a mattock uprooting lesser growths are dealt with economical exactitude; the extermination of noxious weeds by poisonous sprays is governed by strict rules; but the assault with a brush-hook upon lantana is mere slash and bash, from which the assailant himself does not emerge unscathed.

He steps in anywhere, and swings his weapon with a will; but he cannot tell how much, or how little, resistance the stuff will offer, nor can he aim his blow at an angle which is correct for one branch without making it quite incorrect for half a dozen others. He strikes hard at the middle of the mass, and the brush-hook merely bounces. He summons all his strength and strikes again, whereupon everything gives way at once, and he over-balances on to his knees. He rises, breathing a little faster, grimly selects with his eye a promising, thick limb, and, with a fierce stroke, severs it; promptly, from six feet above his head, another portion with which it appeared to have no possible connection, springs out and swipes him smartly across the face.

Now not only the stems of lantana, but all its et ceteras down to twigs, are furnished with a surface like coarse sandpaper, so this is extremely painful, and causes him to do his block. He swings again and again, more and more savagely. His shoulders ache. His arms smart from a hundred scarifying scrapes. Broken branches poke him in the ribs. Unbroken ones lie round his feet and trip him up. But he is making some impression. The wall is no longer solid, and he steps recklessly into the shallow breach. Now the damned stuff is all about him. Stalks spike his ankles with jagged ends. Boughs reach down and snatch his hat from his head. Stems leap backward from his blows. Twigs thrust forward at his eyes. The whole clownish tangle bounds and sways beneath the onslaught, frustrating his force with its infuriating elasticity. To pursue his advantage, he must now leave firm ground, and clamber over a network of interwoven undergrowth which heaves beneath his weight like a spring mattress. The damned and blasted stuff whips out at him from all directions as he lurches forward; it catches in his hair, it tears large rents in his trousers, it sends a loop spinning out like a lassoo, and twitches the brush-hook from his hand. He strives, struggles and slashes while his muscles cry out in agony, the sweat stings viciously in his multitudinous abrasions, and from his lips there flows a steady stream of passionate profanity. . . .

Unfortunately (though perhaps understandably), he is in no condition to realise that the role of the lantana is that of a passive victim; but so it is. The damned and blasted bloody stuff means no harm. It is just the way it grows.

But no crack regiment on parade was ever more orderly than a well-tended plantation of pines; indeed, anybody who has ever driven past such a plantation will agree that his own movement creates so overpowering an illusion that its long rows are wheeling and turning in masterly execution of some complicated drill, that he almost finds himself taking the salute. Up and down the slopes they go—a strip of red earth, two green rows close together, another strip of earth, two more rows—far away into the distance in perfect formation, never breaking ranks, evenly deployed over the surface of the ground, faithfully reproducing its contours, each plant like every other plant, all the same height, all the same colour, all the same shape, identity merged into slowly turning spokes of
red
-green-green,
red
-green-green,
red
-green-green, till the head swims, the eyes blur, and ghostly drums beat out a marching rhythm. . . . Trrr
rum
-tum-tam, trrr
rum
-tum-tum. . . .

Considering how often farmers are called upon to turn straight from lantana to pineapples, or vice versa, it is a wonder that they are not all schizophrenics, for the violent contrasts thus forced upon their attention demand abrupt mental, manual, visual and emotional adjustments which are enough to split any psyche clean down the middle.

Both the Plant and the Weed are hardy and tenacious of life; but whereas lantana needs no help in overwhelming anything so ill-advised as to grow near it, and asks nothing of man but to be left alone, pineapples imperiously demand that human slaves reserve for them exclusive possession of their earth.

Formerly the farmer achieved this by means of a primitive form of labour. Those who have practised it, even briefly, marvel that tyrants, while exploiting galleys, treadmills, and other torments designed to break the spirits of their victims, seem never to have heard of chipping. In chipping pines it is not—as in brushing lantana—a case of plunging in anywhere, and laying about you with heroic abandon; it is a matter of beginning at one end of the first row (taking care not to glance at all the other rows, far less count them), dropping your chin on your breast, fixing your eyes on the ground, and plugging away, row after row, till you reach the last, by which time weeds are sprouting again in the first. Your weapon is not a brush-hook to be fiercely whirled about the head, but a push-hoe to be drearily shoved along the ground. No mood of lively aggressiveness is required, but a dogged patience. Here man is not a combatant, but a drudge. Nothing bounces beneath his feet, nothing slaps him in the face, nothing resists him. He stands on solid earth, and progresses slowly, slowly, pushing his blade beneath shallow-rooted weeds which yield without a struggle. He cannot step to one side or the other, for he is held imprisoned between the rows; there is no escape until he reaches the end—and then another narrow passage opens to receive him. Nowhere on earth does he look so small, so lonely, so hopelessly engaged and so absurdly valiant as when he is standing waist-deep in the middle of a large block of pines, chipping.