Swords and Crowns and Rings (15 page)

He intended to tell Hof when he saw him, but the man was in such obvious distress it went out of his head. Hof was trying to dress himself, all crooked over like a newborn grasshopper. His pants were around his ankles.

‘Give us a hand with me shirt, Jack,' he said.

Jackie hopped on the bunk and eased the grey flannel shirt over Hof's head. Hof had a red flannel bandage, soaked in wintergreen from the smell of it, pinned around the small of his back.

‘Pull me strides up. I can't bend.'

Jackie did this, and Hof leant forward a little, groaning under his breath, so that Jackie could catch the leather loops of his braces and hook them over the trouser buttons.

‘Thanks, Jack.'

He eased himself back on the bed, reached for his pipe, in which he had a cigar butt sticking up like a chimney, and lit it.

Bristles along his haggard jowl had a silvering upon them, though he was probably not yet forty. Jackie looked diffidently about the veranda room, so bare, with a masculine stink of dirty socks, old dungarees, machine oil. There was no personal sign of occupancy except a comb full of dusty hairs. Not even the picture of a racehorse was tacked to a wall-stud.

What was Hof interested in? Who knew, who cared?

For the first time Jackie felt a pang at this man's withering life. He was alone in a houseful of scorpions, and he did not seem to know they were scorpions.

The man on the bed said, between puffs, ‘I wanted me duds on before the boys come back from Ghinni. They get a bit frolicksome. Think you can make out all right today?'

‘No worry,' said Jack. ‘Take it easy. What I don't know, Cockie will tell me.'

Hof seemed strained; his blind eye was sunken like a little piece of grey wood.

Jackie said, ‘You all right, mate? Anything I can get you.'

‘No. I ricked me back few years ago. Wet weather catches it, that's all. Right as a bank tomorrow, more'n likely.' He paused in what seemed to be embarrassment, and Jackie waited.

‘Chance to have a word with you.'

Jackie felt his heart trip. The old grandfather had said something after all. The frightful consequences of his relationship with Maida loomed so large that he did nothing but gape at Hof.

‘You could do better than this, your education and all,' said Hof. ‘Why don't you clear out, try for a better job?'

‘You're...you're not satisfied with me?' blurted the boy.

‘Sure I am,' said Hof irritably. ‘Not saying that. Saying that a smart joker like you could be in a desk job somewhere. Figures. Accounts. Not slaving your guts out on a fruit-farm. That's for bullocks, like me and the boys.'

‘I haven't complained,' said Jackie. Relief and confusion made his voice sulky.

‘No, but you've had plenty to put up with. I ain't blind in both eyes. Just saying, you want to clear out, no hard feelings. If you don't, that's your business.'

Hof sounded short, somehow upset. Jackie felt that the older man had made an overture unusual and difficult for him, and he had not responded the right way.

‘Thanks, anyway,' he said, but Hof did not answer.

Jackie worked throughout the morning, his thoughts elsewhere. During this time he did not think of Maida. His fright of the early morning seemed to have brought him back to his senses. He felt dissociated from her; she had once again become one of the Linzes.

Towards midday Ellie ran out, jubilant.

‘Lorry's coming!' he called. Jackie could hear, in the mountain silence, the grinding and snoring of the vehicle somewhere down the slope. Ellie had been up on a high place watching it.

‘It's all over the road,' he chuckled. ‘The boys must be drunk as stoats.' His fair skin was flushed with excitement.

‘Thank Gawd I'm near knocking-off time,' said Cockie Bailey. ‘I'd rather face a mad bull than them blighters when they're grogged up. Take my advice, Lofty, lie doggo till they sober up.'

He put away his tools, grabbed his coat and went.

Jackie worked doggedly on. He felt a vague sickness in his belly. It was apprehension. The wasp-like whine of the truck came to him intermittently, louder each time, more threatening. He wished he had the honesty of Cockie Bailey, to clear out until the storm was over. He was afraid, he admitted it to himself, but would not allow himself to show it by going to the barn, or even to yarn, ostensibly, with Hof.

The lorry clamoured up the home track. Its radiator cap was off; the tank geysered scalding steam. There was a rending crash as a tree tore away the left fender. The drunk brother, leaning out flaccidly to see the damage, fell on his head in what seemed to be slow motion. Jackie could have sworn the truck ran over his legs as it jerked forward, but there he was, getting up, spouting bile, swaying after the vehicle like a blown leaf.

‘Gee, Kurtie's driving,' cried Ellie, reedily thrilled. He seemed to palpitate with anticipation. ‘Hey, Ma, you and Maida'd better lock yourselves in. Con must be in the DTs.'

Maida put a hand on Jackie's sleeve, tugged. ‘You come too, Jack,' she said urgently. ‘You come with Ma and me.'

Jackie dragged his sleeve away.

‘What do you think I am, a kid? Like hell I'll hide!'

‘Make him, Maida!' wailed the old woman. She seemed to be almost hysterical with fright.

‘I won't,' said Jackie. ‘Go on, clear out. Leave me alone.'

Maida pulled the old woman away. As they disappeared, he heard the girl crying to Ellie: ‘Go and tell Hof, quick, Ellie, tell Hof.'

‘Lot of bloody garbage,' said Jackie. ‘Anyone would think they were murderers.'

But he did think they were murderers, in desire if not in fact, and as he stood on the veranda he was so afraid his mouth was dry. He stood there, feeling colder and colder, watching as the lorry stalled, roared, kangarooed forward, gathering in the corner of the fowl-yard, as it did so, trailing wire-netting, blood-soaked hens, uprooted shrubs, a clothes-line still hung with socks and woollen underwear. At last it came to a halt, its front wheel having shorn off the corner of the red-painted wooden steps below the veranda.

A wan croak of lonesomeness and protest came from the drunk brother, floating haphazardly up the track. His face was unrecognisable with mud and blood.

The fat brother flopped out like a toad from behind the wheel. He blew out ham-coloured cheeks at Jackie, his eyes twinkled like sapphire chips. His skin was translucent as though he had a light within. Jackie could feel heat radiating from him as if he were a stove. The boy stepped back involuntarily to give him room, and the little mouth pursed in an infant's beam.

‘Scared I might tramp on you, cockroach?'

Instantly Jackie knew he had been a fool to stand there, inviting drunken horseplay against which he had no hope of defence. He cursed himself for a big-headed mug. His cousin Maida had been right. He knew almost nothing about men like these. He saw the impatient appetite in the bloodshot eyes of the dark brother, as he approached, drawn, sour-breathed, but far from being in the DTs.

They began to push him from one to the other. He leapt from the veranda and in mid-flight knocked down the drunk brother, feebly dog-paddling towards the steps. The drunk brother broke into plaintive cries.

An iron arm across Jackie's throat held him down. The dark brother, mysteriously transferred from the veranda, showed Jackie laughing teeth from six inches' distance.

‘Here, don't you know better than to tackle poor Theo? Theo's got a silver plate in his loaf, a fall might kill him. Kurtie, you reckon this frigger has killed poor Theo?'

‘Uncalled for, that's what it was.' The fat man's voice was grieved. ‘Poor Theo, he wouldn't hurt a fly. Ought to be learnt a lesson. What you say, Con?'

Meantime Theo's thin hand had shot out and encircled Jackie's ankle with the inhuman grip of a crab. As the boy was lifted, he had a brief glimpse of Ellie's face bulging from a bedroom window; he tried to shout to him to fetch Hof, Cockie Bailey, anyone. But a hand slapped his mouth shut.

The dark brother was full of novel ideas for chastisement, all of a donnish finickiness, but the others outvoted him. So, after ill-aimed and cursory punching and kicking, Jackie was stripped, flypaper was wound around his genitals, kerosene poured on his hair, and he was tally-hoed into the duckpond by the dark brother with a twist of lighted newspaper.

It must have been all over in the space of minutes, but to Jackie, in a stupor of helplessness, it seemed half an hour. Then, as he shivered in the water, trying to wash the kerosene off his face and shoulders, the fat brother, bearing aloft a barrel, waded in, and with one flawless movement dropped it over him. The bottom rim sank into the mud; he was as effectively trapped in a claustrophic dark as a beetle under a glass.

The barrel had been used for making plum brandy. Choking fumes were all Jackie had to breathe. In crazy panic he yelled, struggling to get his arms up to lift the thing off his head, to fall over so that air would rush in at the lower edge. But he could not move. Lights reeled around him, his ears roared, he knew he was suffocating. Then there was another, more thunderous sound, and he became unconscious.

He came to himself on a stretcher before the kitchen fire. Except for Ellie and Hof, the Linz brothers were not visible. Hof leant on a stick near by. Maida, not in tears, but with a frozen shocked face, tried to press Jackie's lips to the rim of a glass of brandy.

‘Oh, God no, not that stuff.' He could scarcely bear to think of the fumes in the barrel. He sat up.

‘I'm all right. What happened, what was that noise, like a gun?'

‘It was a gun all right,' said Ellie merrily. ‘Grandpa came with his old shotgun and fired in the air. The boys thought he was blasting at them; you shoulda seen them go!'

He sounded like a child who'd visited a circus.

‘Cockie went in and pulled you out,' said Hof. ‘Silly bastards, mad with the booze; didn't know what they were doing.'

Cockie, standing near by, hair standing up in wet tufts, said, ‘Bloody near killed him. Ought to be reported to the John Hops.'

His kind, stupid mouth worked around his missing teeth. He was roused to fury at last. ‘As for that other business—dirty, lowdown trick, ought to be ashamed.'

Maida's face flushed faintly. Her glance caught Jackie's wild one for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears. Jackie was aware that the flypaper had been removed somehow, that he was stinging as though most of his pubic hair had been pulled out. ‘I've had enough, Hof!' he blurted out. ‘You can give me my time.'

‘Going meself at the end of the month,' said Cockie, ‘and if I was half a man I'd go this minute.'

Hof turned his ponderous head towards Jackie.

‘I'm real sorry, Jack. It won't happen again, I warrant.'

‘You're a bit late, aren't you, you stupid heap?' yelled Jackie. ‘Why didn't you get up off your great cement bum and stop them before this? They've been at it in one way or another since the moment I first saw them. I'm clearing out. I've had the flaming lot of you.'

He became aware that someone was yelling even more loudly than he, in a high-pitched squeal, and that it was his Aunt Eva, who was jumping up and down and beating at the air in a rabbity hysteria, shouting, ‘Don't let him go, Hof! What will we do if he goes? He'll tell my brother Jerry and Jerry will think hard of us.'

‘For God's sake take her away,' said Hof gruffly, and Ellie and his sister half-dragged the skinny little figure from the kitchen.

‘Aunt Eva never did anything to me,' said Jackie. ‘Nor Ellie or Maida. And I've no complaints of you, Hof. But I'm going.'

‘The truck's out of action,' said Hof. ‘But Ellie and me can get her working by tomorrow afternoon. We could get you to Ghinni in time to catch the night express.'

‘I'll bloody well walk, then,' said Jackie. He heaved up, wrapped the blanket around himself, and marched out. At the door he had to wait for Cockie to open it, otherwise the blanket would have fallen off as he jumped. This seemed the last humiliation.

Cockie helped him roll his few things in a swag. He kept shaking his head and saying, ‘You'll freeze stiff on the road. Don't do it, you silly bastard.'

But in obsessive rage and mortification Jackie left, saying to Cockie, ‘Tell Hof to send my wages after me. I got enough for the fare home.'

As he passed down the track under the overhanging trees he thought he saw Maida looking from the parlour window, but could not be sure. Damn her then. There were a lot of things he should have done, like thanking old Martin Linz. He hadn't thanked even Cockie, or Ellie for fetching him. Too late now. They were all of a piece, a nest of bull-ants, and the best thing to do was to get as far away from them as he could.

There was rain muttering about in the sky, the mountain gullies were filled with gauze. Orchards were everywhere, a sweet-smelling diapering of the long hillsides. Far below streaks of light, like spilled salt, showed the courses of creeks running again after the rains.

Ten miles down the road Jackie sat and rested, looking at the hills. They were not savage, lunar hills like those of Paddy's Range, but ruminative and placid, lying down around the landscape like pensive animals. His eyes stung at the sight of those mild unfortified hills, which in some irrational way reminded him of Maida. Or Cushie? His memories of the two girls, their butterfly softness, their defencelessness, rushed together. He began to shake with delayed shock. His anger evaporated, his insides vibrated, his legs seemed filled with water. The landscape quivered, and the trees detached themselves from the earth and stood in the air.

Before very long the Linz truck groaned down the hill. Jackie would gladly have fled into the scrub and hidden until it passed, but he was unable to move.

Hof could not lean from the cab. He jerked his head stiffly and ordered: ‘Get in. I'll take you to the station.'