Swords and Crowns and Rings (19 page)

‘How do you know?'

Maida flushed. ‘I missed just before you went away, and then I missed again this time. But there have been other things. That's how Ma guessed.'

Jackie felt his heart flop like a fish. ‘Your mother...she knows?'

‘Ma's had ten children,' Maida said. ‘How could she not notice?'

She lowered her voice. ‘Jackie, I'm so sorry. I know it's a terrible thing for you to come back here to.'

‘My God,' said Jackie in consternation. ‘But maybe you're sickening for something. People make mistakes, I've heard. Don't you think maybe...?'

Maida shook her head. There was something so despairing about the movement that the boy was chilled. He said hoarsely, ‘I can't believe it; it's...it's a shock. I have to think about it.'

But as he said the words he knew they were foolish. There was nothing to think about. He hadn't an idea in his head.

Suddenly it crossed his mind that this was what Hof had meant when he chided him in such abrupt words for returning to High Valley. That equivocal look of his—half embarrassed, half annoyed.

‘Hof knows!' groaned Jackie.

‘Yes,' said Maida. ‘Ma made such a fuss. She had a real bad turn. They all know. That's why Con thrashed me. And when he'd finished, Kurtie kicked me.' She shuddered. ‘He said some—awful things.' She did not look at him. ‘Kurtie's bad, Jackie. Bad, like something going rotten.'

‘What will we do?' asked Jackie. To his own ears it sounded like the question of a child, dependent, gormless. ‘I never dreamed...I thought we were too young or something. We must have been mad.'

‘I don't know what to do, Jackie,' said Maida. She raised her face suddenly. There was terror on it. ‘I thought I might run away, but I haven't any money. Where would I go? And they'd come after me. But if I stay here I'll get killed.'

She stared at him with an absent, mazed look.

Jackie snapped, ‘Don't be silly. Who'd kill you? That fat swine?'

She rocked herself to and fro: ‘No, no. They've sent for
him
because of Grandfather. You don't know him. Oh, Jesus, you don't know what he's like.'

The boy's blood felt as though it had frozen. He stammered, ‘You mean your father? He's coming home?'

‘They sent for him last week, and he may come any time. Oh, Jackie, he's like a devil. He always said he'd slit my throat if I got pregnant.'

Now she was standing up. She seemed to have gone to pieces. Jackie noticed how haggard and wild she had become. She beat her hands together, and he feared she was going to scream hysterically. He took hold of her by the waist, resting his head where, in his ignorance of biology, he imagined his catastrophic child budding in darkness.

He held her tightly, saying, ‘Maida, we'll think of something. You've got to stay calm a bit longer. Don't make a noise; you'll wake up the old man. Sssssh, Maida, ssssh!'

‘Ma knows, Ma knows he'll kill me, and her too for letting me out of her sight. Oh, you don't know what he's done, what I've seen him do, what he's got away with...and none of my brothers would lift a finger to defend me.'

It was like a nightmare. And in the middle of it a dry, broken voice said, ‘Trink, trink'; or so Jackie thought. One of the old man's eyes was open, wide open, with a cloudy fixity. As Jackie watched with horror, the other eye opened, this one with a gleam of intelligence. Maida disengaged herself quickly, ran to the bed, slipped her arm around her grandfather's shoulders, and raised him a little.

Tears went on dripping down her face, but she held the old man steadily enough. Her expression was one of pity, such as Jackie had observed before when she looked at her young brother Ellie. She said, ‘Yes, Grandpa, a little wine and water...just what you like.'

But the old man was unable to take more than a sip or two.

His wavering hand seized on Maida's firm young one, held it.

‘Warm.'

‘Yes, Grandpa. You're remembering your English, Grandpa. You must be feeling better.'

‘Little girl,' he said. ‘Good.'

His eyes wandered towards Jackie. A smile twitched his sunken lips. ‘Lucky,' he said.

Jackie came nearer.

‘Say something to him,' urged Maida.

Jackie could think of nothing, so he winked. A gurgle of a laugh came out of the irregularly throbbing throat. He said something Jackie could not catch: ‘Good little man', was it? He seemed to look from one to the other of them, tried to say something, but his eyes closed again, and his head sank on his chest.

She tucked the blanket about her grandfather, slipped in her hand to see if his feet were warm, and turned once again to Jackie.

‘I'm sorry I came out with it like that. I've been that upset, not knowing what to do for the best, and then when Ma said that you were coming back I knew that they'd tricked you into it. I knew you didn't know, about me I mean.'

She took a step towards him. ‘Don't look like that, Jackie. I know it's an awful thing to happen to a boy your age.'

He looked at her, ashamed. ‘You're only a couple of years older than I am. And it's you that it's happened to. God, Maida, I don't know what to do. I never imagined...I thought girls did something.'

But as he said it he knew it was a melancholy improbability that even if there were something girls could do Maida would know anything about it. She was as defencelessly fertile as a hen or a cow.

And besides, he hadn't thought anything of the kind: his head had been full of nothing but appreciation of his own bliss.

He said, ‘Don't you give way again now. We'll think about it. There must be something we can do. But we have to think about it.'

She nodded dumbly, and her expression of trust was unbearable to him. He went straight to the barn, lit his lamp, and threw himself on his bed. His head seemed full of a duststorm, everything whirling mindlessly.

‘Me going to be a father—and I only left school last year!'

It sounded not only mad but ridiculous and disgusting, as though he'd all at once grown a white beard.

‘She can't be right. She's made a mistake somehow.'

But it was not the memory of Maida's distraught face that told him he was lying to himself. It was the attitude of the rest of the Linzes. Auntie Eva, kissing him as though she really welcomed him, the pig Kurt with his gentle handshake and his ‘bygones be bygones'. Poor old Hof, wanting to say something to warn him, and yet not liking to be clear about it.

Certainty stabbed Jackie like a knife.

‘Of course they had to get me back here. They're going to lay a complaint to the cops. Carnal knowledge, something.'

He tried to think of the talk of his friends about such cases, but he could remember more dirt than facts. What happened? Did you go to jail? Did you have to pay the girl money—support the kid when it was born, was that it?

And Maida? Put into one of those sinister Homes to which certain girls in Kingsland had mysteriously vanished? Her child whisked away into an orphanage...drab uniforms, grim spinster ladies to look after it...beaten...bullied...scorned...a bastard.

He was in such a state that he couldn't remember whether he was recalling something he had read in
Truth
, or whether these things had been told to him as facts by people he knew.

He supposed that if he hadn't returned voluntarily to High Valley they would have put the police on to him. Sergeant Trivett calling at the shop, his mother red as a beet, the Nun saying it was impossible, a warrant out for his arrest.

‘But I came. I came of my own free will, like the biggest mug that was ever hatched.'

Once more he had a chilling feeling that in some inexplicable way he had been manipulated by destiny. If Jerry's sister hadn't married a Linz, if he'd been able to get a proper job in Kingsland, if he hadn't been so bloody miserable that he grabbed Maida that rainy night, just to get a little surcease from his loneliness and aloneness...But now he was trapped. And Fate had done it again. If Cushie hadn't showed him that there was some chance of their getting married one day, if he hadn't needed money to get to Sydney, if there had only been some other way of getting it besides coming back to High Valley...

The memory of Cushie was like a blow. Cushie, his darling, his soft, loving other self. Distractedly, Jackie sprang off the bunk and walked up and down. What could he do? Clear out, and do it quick. Hof would help him some way. Hof understood how he had felt. Hof had sympathy with a man's desires and inbuilt sexual opportunism. Maybe Hof had been through it all himself, when he was younger.

What would he say to Hof?

‘Right-oh, I've had the drum now. I'm going. You can help me get away down to Ghinni. You said yourself that I should never have come back.'

But Jackie's imaginary conversation with Hof did not end there. Unvolitionally it went on: ‘I've given your sister a kid, but that's her lookout. Maybe your old man will kill her, as she fears. Or maybe she'll just get thrashed within an inch of her life, as she looks as though she's already been thrashed. And after the baby's born, what then? Maybe your old dad will turn her out, and she can starve to death, or kill herself or get work in the tartshop in Ghinni. But more likely she'll be kept here for the rest of her life, as a slave to all of you, kept out of sight, less than the dirt.'

Like her mother, in fact. And he thought of the old woman, helpless before her brutal husband, delivering all those children in blood and torment, not wanting any of them, seeing them only as symbols of degradation.

The illogicality of it was fantastic.

How could so much dreadfulness come from a few minutes of joy? It was like rings spreading in a pond from a tossed stone.

So he continued all night. Sometimes he sprang up and threw a few of his belongings into his suitcase, moving with frantic hurry as though there were not a moment to be lost. Other times he sat on the bed in a daze of horror and incredulity. It was like a frightful dream from which he could not awaken.

Once or twice he went to the barn door, gulping in the cold fresh air like an imprisoned animal. He saw then, though it was very late, the dim lamplight in old man Linz's room, and a shadow moving between it and the window. Maida, he supposed, devoted, kind and simple. Better than he would be, ever. How could he leave her to face whatever cruel fate was hers?

At last he fell asleep in a delirious exhaustion, and was awakened in broad sunlight by Ellie's shaking him. Stupefied with weariness and despair, he made pretence of eating breakfast, and went off to the orchard.

He came, at last, face to face with Hof in one of the peach avenues. Jackie had not done his work well; he had missed trees, and sprayed others in a half-pie fashion. He looked at Hof with guilt and appeal.

‘I can't keep my mind on it, Hof, and I guess you know why.'

Hof inclined his grizzling head.

‘Maida told me last night. I...I suppose it's looney to say I couldn't believe it, but that's the way I felt. I just...never thought of consequences, I suppose.'

Hof did not look at Jackie. He gathered up a handful of green velvet pebbles which were prematurely fallen fruit.

‘Hof,' said Jackie. ‘I have to talk about it.'

Hof sat down with his back against a tree, fixed a cigar stump in his pipe, lit it. He did not look at Jackie. His eye fixed itself in sober concentration on the red end of the cigar.

‘The thing is,' said Jackie, ‘I don't know what to do. It's bloody awful.'

‘You could scarper,' said Hof. ‘Most would.'

He puffed awhile. ‘Wouldn't blame you meself. Maida knew what she was doing. Knew the risk. Drummed into her for years.'

Jackie did not know what to say to that. At last he mumbled, ‘She was unhappy.'

Hof gave him an unreadable look. ‘No fun being born a woman, I guess. Still and all, she has to lie on the bed she made.'

‘You trying to let me off, or something?' demanded Jackie, ‘Anything Maida did, I did too. For all you know, I forced her.'

‘She said you didn't,' said Hof. ‘She's real fond of you, you know. Said she'd gladly marry you even if it wasn't a case of must be.'

‘Marry me!' Jackie felt as if someone had punched him, winded him. He could only stare at Hof like a fool.

Hof seemed as though he could not believe what he saw on his companion's face. He said, almost compassionately, ‘Boy, what in hell do you think the old woman kidded you back here for?'

Jackie stammered, ‘I thought...I thought...so they could get the police after me. Or...so they, your brothers, could beat me up.'

Hof shook his head. ‘You poor little bastard, you're still wet behind the ears, aren't you?'

‘I can't get married,' yelled Jackie. ‘I'm just turned eighteen!'

How could he marry Maida, this girl he scarcely knew, when some day he was to marry Cushie Moy?

Though it was only half-way through the morning, he went to the barn, climbed up into the loft and crawled in amongst the hay.

‘I've got to think, I've got to think,' he kept saying to himself, but not hearing his own words.

After a long time he heard someone climbing the loft ladder laboriously. A hand touched him timorously, a soft voice said, ‘Jackie, you all right, Jackie?'

‘Frig off, Ellie.'

He could hear the boy shifting restlessly in the straw. At last he said, ‘Maida says, you don't have to marry her.'

‘Big of her,' said Jackie bitterly. ‘Well, you've delivered your message, so sling your hook.'

Ellie said haltingly, ‘I don't see why you don't want to marry Maida. I reckon you ought to be proud. I mean, Maida's a lovely girl, and you're...'

‘I'm what?' growled Jackie, sitting up and looking blazingly at the boy, who retreated a step or two, seemed about to run, and then for a moment, uncharacteristically looked Jackie full in the eyes.