Lantana Lane (13 page)

“Oh, no!” babbled Sue. “Tony, you really can't . . .!”

Aunt Isabelle now caught the infection of panic and, entirely deserted by her English, began a long and impassioned plea in French, the gist of which was that Tony must render himself more philosophical, and recognise that life was full of losses, ah,
Ciel,
did she not know of what she spoke, she who had lost her country, and her home, and her Sevres dinner service the most elegant, and her silver spoons of the period
Louis Quinze?
From such trials was character formed, and here was an opportunity—unlikely to be repeated in this land where all were apt to be
sans gene,
and few encouraged the young to treat life
au sérieux
—for Tony to practise a mature self-discipline. He must therefore resign himself; he must renounce his life. She reached into the dim illumination of the torchlight, laid hold of his shorts, and urged desperately :
“II faut t'en passer, mon pauvre, il faut. . . .”

But Tony (who does not normally admit to knowing any French at all) jerked himself from her grasp and yelled in exasperation : “I will NOT! Why should I? I can see it as plain as anything!” At this Aunt Isabelle was seized with a fearful spasm of shuddering, Sue moaned faintly, and Henry burst out:

“All
right,
then, blast it! What the Hell are we waiting for? Here, Sue, you take the torch. Come on, Tony, lean over and I'll grab your ankles.” Tony eagerly complied, and was presently suspended, head downward, over a black void.

“Prenez garde!”
shrieked Aunt Isabelle in agony. “
Prenez garde de tomber!
”

“He can't,” snarled Henry.“I'm holding him, aren't I?”

Sue remained dumb. She was watching, with fascinated horror, a fair head and a rosy, upside-down face disappearing slowly into unspeakable depths; but before it vanished, it opened its mouth to reproach her. “Stiffen the lizards, Mum, how d'you think I'm going to see? Give us some light down here, can't you?”

She gulped and obeyed, reaching round Henry and holding the torch at arm's length. Now she could see only that portion of her child which would usually be described as from the neck down, but which had become, in this nightmare, from the neck up. Slowly he sank from her view until nothing remained visible but his knobby knees, his lean, brown calves, his ankles—gripped in the vice of his father's hands—and his dear, darling, dirty feet. She turned her head away, and held her breath. Henry, his arms rigid and quivering, muttered that the damn kid was heavier than he thought.

Tony's voice, muffled, but gallantly cheerful, came up from the pit.

“A bit more, Dad . . . a bit more still. . . . Hi! That's
enough
! Oh, gee, Dad, pull me up a bit, quick!”

Aunt Isabelle whispered : “I can bear no more!” and melted into the darkness outside. Sue clenched her teeth, and thrust the torch lower. “Oh, darling,
do
hurry up!” she besought. “Henry,
do
hold him tight!”

But now, from the abyss, came a shout of triumph.

“G
OT IT
! Okay, Dad, you can haul me up now.”

Aunt Isabelle met them at the kitchen door. She informed them that she was filling the copper with water, and lighting a fire beneath it. When the water was hot, Tony would kindly take a bath, to which she would add some disinfectant. Before entering the bath, however, he would be so good as to place the instrument (no, no, she did not want to see it, God forbid!) in the copper, where she would boil it for an hour. Better, for two hours. She rejoiced that he had once more his fife, and would thus be enabled to pursue his musical studies; but for herself, she was no longer young enough to support such incidents, and she would recommend that, in order to foil any further wickedness on the part of that Joy there, a strong catch be affixed high on the door of the
cabinet.
She then returned to the copper, and as Tony entered the house behind his parents, Henry barked at him:

“Don't you bring that revolting thing inside! Leave it on the step.”

“Yes, Dad,” said Tony, a model of docility.

In the living-room the brandy was still on the table. Without a word, Sue brought their glasses, and Henry poured it—straight. Tony was offered lemonade again, and this time affably accepted. He beamed at them over its rising bubbles.

“Gee, Dad, it worked well, didn't it?”

“It worked,” said Henry.

“Thanks for helping me get it back, Dad. Thanks, Mum.”

“Don't mention it, darling,” said Sue, sprawled in her chair, and half raising her glass to him. “A ple-easure.”

It was almost a hiccup, and she began to giggle weakly. Henry gave her a stern look, and said: “You're drunk, old girl.”

Tony, advancing eagerly to stare, demanded with interest: “Is she, Dad? Is she really dr . . .?”

“
No!
“wailed Sue. “I'm only te-erribly tired! . . .”

“Tony,” commanded Henry, “go to your bath.”

“Okay, Dad,” said Tony, and went, with wondering backward glances.

So when faint, sweet sounds of distant piping are heard, we are all thankful to know that the music so nearly lost to us was saved, and that presently we shall see Tony coming buoyantly down the Lane, treading on air, his fife (two hours boiled) at his lips, and his clouds of glory trailing behind him. He has
Sweet and Low
to perfection now, and he is learning, at Henry's suggestion,
Safely', Safely Gathered In.

O
NE DAY
the word went round that surveyors were busy with their instruments on the main road half a mile short of Dillillibill. Aub Dawson saw them first, and reported that they looked decent enough blokes, but his grudging tone suggested that he was reserving his opinion, and could give no positive guarantee that they were not concealing horns, hoofs and forked tails.

Although these activities had no apparent connection with the Lane, we felt bothered. Perhaps this was because they had no apparent connection with anything else either. If we could have seen them as a first stage in straightening operations, later to be extended in our direction, and finally past our doors, they would have been, though upsetting, at least comprehensible. We should have known what we were worrying about. But just there the ridge is a veritable razor-back, and Nature has quite clearly ordained where the road is to go. Theoretically, it is two chains wide; but that, of course, is nonsense, and has always been treated as such by those whose properties debouch upon it. If it were indeed so constructed; its edges would pass on the one side through Bert Hall's front verandah, and on the other behind the Robertsons' packing-shed; and since it could hardly be supported, as these structures are, upon wooden stumps, it would necessarily float on air.

So, being unable to account for the presence of surveyors at this spot, we suffered from that vague uneasiness, that wobbling of common sense, which mystery occasions. We began to talk once more of The Deviation, sturdily agreeing that this strange visitation could not possibly have anything to do with us, but wondering, all the same, whether it might be a cunning ruse—a feint before springing on our Lane.

But to our amazement, it was observed that white pegs appeared, indicating that men with machines at their disposal are irresistibly stimulated by the thought of achieving the difficult, even if it be, also, the unnecessary. They were in no hurry, however. Having done their part, the surveyors disappeared, and three months passed peacefully without further official developments, though Kelly knocked out one of the pegs one night when Ken was coming home from a party, and a couple more vanished when the bank slipped during a heavy downpour, and a fourth was discovered in the Bells' backyard. Small boys are always bringing extraordinary things home, and as a matter of fact Gwinny found it quite useful as a wedge under her copper-stand.

Then, dramatically, men and machines appeared, and set to work with furious zeal. For a couple of hundred yards the road became a waste of deeply churned earth, guarded at either end by signs enjoining CAUTION and proclaiming MEN AT WORK. With vast labour, and the expenditure of a sum which, no doubt, would have exceeded the combined annual income of the Lane, the road actually was deflected four inches to the right in one place, and six inches to the left in another, thus eliminating a curve whose existence we had not noticed until then.

Bert Hall and Tom Robertson were a bit browned off about having to put in the best part of a day reorganising their car entrances—but they admitted it might have been a great deal worse. In fact Tom said he felt pretty safe now about having his packing shed on the road, because they weren't likely to start mucking around there again for a long time.

Sombrely we saw the men and the machines depart. The incident was closed. Nothing had happened to us, and the inscrutable purposes of officialdom remained hidden in a Sphinx-like silence. Yet we were once more assailed and unnerved by thoughts of change. “Imagine that sort of thing in the Lane,” said old Mrs. Hawkins, shaking her head. “It doesn't bear thinking of.”

At
PICANINNY
daylight all the kookaburras laugh together, and all the farmers wake.

A little later, Nelson comes in from the west, flying low over the Hawkins' pines as he swoops up the hill. No one knows exactly where he lives, but he always appears from somewhere in the patch of scrub at the south end of the Sports Ground, and vanishes in the same direction when dusk is falling. The Lane is his daytime beat, and he commutes to and fro as regularly as a clerk travelling between city office and suburban home.

He flies swiftly eastward, and alights on the electric light pole outside the Bells' gate. This pole stands on the Lane's highest hillcrest, and its top is gilded as soon as the sun rises out of the ocean sixteen miles away, and far below. It is thus an excellent perch for a nippy winter morning, but it has, for Nelson, two other advantages : firstly, it is the best place from which to survey his territory; and secondly, it is right beside his breakfast.

Here, then, he sits for a while, fluffing out his feathers the better to enjoy the sunshine before embarking on the business of the day. Like all kookaburras at rest, he is a picture of placid inertia—motionless, ruffled and rather portly, with his great beak sunk pensively upon his breast. Not for him the restless hoppings, the alert head movements, the wild and wary sideways glances of other birds; he might almost be asleep. But his one round, brown eye is wide open, and observant; let a cricket stir a whisker in the grass, and—though he may, or may not be on to it with deadly speed and precision—he will know that it is there.

At this time of the morning he will usually ignore it, for he likes to begin the day with a good meal, and he knows that there is something more substantial than a cricket waiting for him nearby. So he saves the keen edge of his appetite for this, and addresses himself to his regular morning inspection of the Lane.

Very pleasant it looks, too. Most of the scene is still in shadow, but while he watches, the climbing sun touches the taller tree-tops, and then the ridge-poles of several houses built upon high ground. Presently, glinting along stretched wires, it makes its way from his own pole to the next, shedding a few beams in passing on long branches thrust up by the lantana to intercept it. Where the road dips, the wires elude it, but it leaps the gap, finds them again on the next hill, and runs along them, claiming more and more of the trees as it goes, and scattering light over the lantana walls, until, on the upward slope beyond Herbie Bassett's, it slides down another pole and comes to earth, painting a narrow strip of road with glowing red. Nelson watches this benevolent invasion from on high, and basks in its increasing warmth.

As yet there are no human sounds, but the Lane is far from silent. There is a good deal of complacent cackling going on in the fowlyards, Joe Hardy's Butch is barking, and the Achesons' Lassie is tirelessly mooing her detestation of the fences which separate her from the Hawkins' bull. Down in the scrub along the creeks the whip-birds are calling; a magpie is carolling away with full-throated abandon somewhere behind the Dawsons' house; and two butcher-birds in the Bells' hibiscus tree are spilling out notes like glittering drops of water. Nelson hears all this vocalism with composure, for he is not without his own talent, whose exercise has earned him greater fame than theirs.

He is, in any case, more concerned with his human neighbours. He likes to know in good time what they are all likely to be up to during the day, for many of their activities concern him closely. It is always worth while following anyone who has a spade in his hand; scythes and rakes, too, mean disturbance of the grass, and of the small, edible things that live in it. Most rewarding of all are ploughs and rotary-hoes; he answers the sound of these as though it were a dinner bell, and indeed, from some convenient fence-post on the edge of the freshly-turned earth, it is an acre of dinner-table that he surveys with his one watchful eye, and a meal of many courses that he swoops down to snatch.

So now he looks westward along the dipping, curving stretch of road, and begins his observations at the Hawkins' place on the corner. There he can see Bill crossing the paddock, bucket in hand, to milk—and wading, it would appear, knee-deep in diamonds, for the grass is drenched with dew, and the sun has just reached it. But neither milk nor diamonds means a thing to Nelson; nor is he interested in old Mrs. Hawkins, who is emptying a teapot out the kitchen window. He has nothing to hope from Uncle Cuth, either, whom he can see across the road, pottering about in Joe's fowlyard. He notes with annoyance that Tim Acheson is getting ready to spray his pines—for spraying is something which Nelson simply loathes. Herbie Bassett is, as usual, sitting on his verandah steps, staring, and Nelson hardly gives him a glance—having come to regard him as being merely a feature of the landscape. At the Kennedys' no one is visible yet, but since Nelson will spend most of his time there later in the day, his gaze does not linger now. Instead, it crosses the road again to the Griffiths', where Sue is pegging some clothes out on the line, and Henry is tinkering with his ute, and Aunt Isabelle is standing beside him explaining what is wrong. Nelson observes all this with indifference, but his eye pauses for a moment, rather coldly, on Jake who is plunging around among the spinach for a stick which Tony has thrown for him. Not that Nelson is afraid of dogs—or of anything else except, possibly, eagles—but he has reached a mature age, and he finds it tiresome to be leapt at, and barked at, when he is busy with something on the ground, so he visits the Griffiths rarely, briefly, and very watchfully.

By now his researches have brought him almost level with his own pole, and Aub Dawson, emerging from his packing shed sees him, and calls genially : “Kook! Kook!” Nelson cuts him dead. Aub has a habit of throwing him morsels of corned beef, sausage, cooked meat and even bread; this is not the kind of human being one wastes time on. So he hops round on his perch to look for Ken Mulliner, who is erratic in his contributions but, when he throws anything, throws a generous and juicy lump of steak. Ken is just coming round the corner of his house, but it is immediately obviously that he is making for Kelly, where he will spend anything from an hour to a whole morning with his head inside the bonnet, so Nelson makes a little movement which is near enough to a shrug, and hops round again to see what the Arnolds are doing. And, to his intense satisfaction, Dick is carrying a can of petrol over to his rotary-hoe.

Nelson now has his day mapped out. As soon as he has breakfasted he will do some hunting in the wake of the rotary-hoe, and when he is tired of that he will look in on the Kennedys who are sure to have something tasty for him; a dead mouse, perhaps, fresh from the trap. After that he will cruise around for a while to see what he can pick up. It is getting warm enough now for the snakes to come out, and he has a fancy not only for the gastronomic pleasure these afford, but for the excitement of closing his beak on their necks, fighting their wriggling resistance, exerting the full power of his wings to bear them aloft into a tree, and there methodically bashing them against a branch. Later he will return to the Kennedys' and pass the rest of the afternoon there, following them around; for one does not live by meat alone, and they provide, as well, conversation and most agreeable homage.

Now he can turn his attention to breakfast. He hops round once more to face north, and directs his gaze downward at the Bells' house, almost beneath his beak. Alf, Tristy and Gally are visible picking pines in the middle distance, but Ding, Dong and Lynette are on the verandah, squabbling about something. It is time for Nelson to receive attention, so he announces his presence with a few casual clucks. They are too occupied with their own affairs to take any notice of him, but EElaine, coming out to make the beds, catches sight of him, pokes her head in at the door, and calls : “Mu-um! Nelson's here.” Nelson settles down patiently to wait, but he has not waited long before Gwinny comes bustling out with her hands full of big, red lumps of meat which she lays side by side on the verandah rail. She is, as always, very busy, so she merely gives him a glance, and calls out hospitably : “Come on, Nelson! Here you are! Kook! Kook!” before bustling indoors again.

Nelson sails down and begins his breakfast. He picks up each piece neatly, bashes it on the rail, swallows it, and hops along sideways to the next. The lumps do not really need bashing; he employs this technique partly from force of habit, and partly because the meat provided by humans differs from that which he catches for himself in that it sticks to the beak. Sometimes it sticks so obstinately that, before he can free it, he has to bash it many times, and shake his head with a violence which makes his beak rattle like castanets.

By now the children's squabble has ripened, and bedlam reigns on the verandah. Ding and Dong, locked in combat, are reeling from one bed to another, entangled in sheets and blankets, and Lynette is swiping at them both with pillows. EElaine, justly incensed at finding herself thus hampered in her morning task, is fiercely berating them, and slapping at any bare legs she can reach. But Nelson is well accustomed to this kind of thing, and takes no notice until a pillow grazes him, and almost knocks him off his perch as it flies past to fall on Gwinny's bed of lettuce seedlings. He regains his balance with a swift threshing of his wings, and EElaine cries accusingly: “There! Look what you've done I You've scared poor Nelson!” The children freeze, momentarily smitten by compunction; but poor Nelson is already dealing with another bit of meat, and shows no sign of being disturbed by anything except its adhesive quality, so Ding declares robustly : “Aw, don't be so wet! Nelson doesn't care!”

But in this he is wrong. Nelson will put up with commotion if he must, but he prefers peace and quiet. So when he comes to the last mouthful he carries it back to his pole and, having bashed and swallowed it, sits there for a brief, post-prandial rest, sunning himself, and puffing his plumage out until he looks so round, soft and cuddlesome that he might have come out of a toy shop.

However, there is work to be done, and soon his feathers subside, his fluffiness gives way to a smoother, sleeker outline, his beak lifts and stretches forward, and his keen eye stares attentively over the Arnolds' roof; he no longer looks placid and amiable, but purposeful and predatory. Suddenly, with a thrust of his claws, a flap, a flutter and a flash of blue from his wings, he is off, arrow-straight, towards the sound of the rotary-hoe.

Nobody knows how long Nelson has lived in the Lane. One kookaburra is very like another, and he may have been around, unnoticed and anonymous, for years before the loss of his right eye transformed him into a recognisable individual. Gwinny says she can remember him when Ding and Dong were born, so he must be at least eleven. How much older than that a kookaburra can be, we have no idea, for we are not strong on ornithology; truth compels the admission that we are not even sure whether he is a he or a she. But what does that matter? The point is that no one could possibly refer to a creature so bursting with personality as It.

Since such quiz questions as the kookaburra's average expectation of life, and the manner of determining its sex, must be of interest to all intelligent persons, we are always saying to each other that we must look these things up, and it is quite possible that Bruce Kennedy may actually do so some day. But The Kookaburra is one thing, and Nelson is quite another. He is one of the neighbours, a fellow-resident of the district, and it seems natural to accept him as such, without impertinent probings into matters of this kind. Nevertheless, he does inspire other questions which really exercise our minds; but the trouble about these is—as Marge Kennedy complains—that it would be useless to seek the answers in books, because experts have a way of telling you everything about their subject except what you are fairly burning to know.

We wonder, for instance, what the other kookaburras think of Nelson. Do they approve of the extent to which he fraternises with us? Of course they too, like all their kind, treat us with a good deal of familiarity, and Nelson is by no means the only fence-post sitter when the soil is being turned over. No member of this large and popular family will hesitate to approach a human who demonstrates goodwill by throwing a titbit; nor upon rather closer acquaintance, decline to perch upon a knee, or accept a gift from friendly fingers. But Nelson goes so much further that he makes his relations appear, by comparison, quite stand-offish, and consequently we ask ourselves (having no one else to ask) whether they regard him, perhaps, as one who has carried traditional mateiness too far? When they see him fly through the Kennedy's kitchen door, and emerge ten minutes later looking almost indecently replete, do they envy him the largesse he has received, or do they mutter among themselves of quislings and collaborationists? Do they admire the confidence with which he alights on the toe of Bruce Kennedy's boot, and the nonchalant skill with which he remains there even when it begins to walk about—or do they look down their beaks and say to each other that there is such a thing as dignity, and you can be gracious without making a clown of yourself?