Best Australian Short Stories (12 page)

The sun being now up, and water at hand, of course they had a swim. They swam and lolled and swam, and had some bread and jam.

Then they swam again.

Then they had more bread and jam.

Then they made a discovery.

It was the sort of discovery one might expect to make in any old diggings, being merely a nine-foot shaft with a short drive in it. But it was important: it did away with the necessity of walking six miles to Captain Moonlight’s cave. Bill and Waldo went down it by means of footholes in the sides, but the legs of Peter and Bulljo were too short for that system of descending holes, so they were lowered into it clinging to the length of hessian. All accounted the drive a fine place for outcasts to live in, and there was a busy interval, lowering down the food supply, with stones to sit on, and a special place to keep the muzzle-loading pistol. The drive was four feet square, and when all were crowded into it, there was a great deal of exultation over the prospect of living there for ever. It was dark, to be sure, but they had their candle, the bringing of which Bill accounted an act of inspired foresight on his part. “Cripes, I must have had the very identical idea of living in drives,” he said, and such was the general jubilation over lighting up that a slice of bread and jam was served out to all hands, who found it delightful, this guzzling in the bowels of the earth. A good deal of clay got mixed up with their victual, but what of that? Clay won’t hurt you, and a bloke has to eat a ton of dirt before he dies, as is well known. A good deal of clay got mixed up with Peter and Bulljo before the day was out, too, as they were in a constant state of either being hauled out of, or lowered into, their abode. But that was a trifle; mere garniture of those who dwell in drives.

A scorching day, with the sun cooking quartz pebbles to the temperature of hot scones, and requiring one to tread gingerly on them with bare feet. Another disadvantage of diggings is that there are no trees to hack at with your tomahawk, and no game to pot at with your pistol. They fired off a round apiece at a jam tin, just for the joy of loud explosions, but powder was valuable and bullets home-made, and not to be wasted. Save for this diversion, the life of outcasts was found to be a trifle formal in procedure. By lunch-time they had lunched six times on bread and jam, and had six swims. In the intervals of these employments they were busy getting in and out of their hole. The hole, though finely compact, forced heads into a too easy punching distance, and argument reverberated in it as an excitation to punching. Moreover, the exercise of hauling the junior outcasts out of it discovered a diversion in not hauling them out. This was to dangle the hessian just out of their reach, or to sit off a distance at leisure in order to enjoy their insensate terror. When subjected to this species of entertainment, Peter and Bulljo found themselves abandoned forever to perish in a hole, and piercing yells went up for release. When they were finally lugged aloft their confidence in the integrity of elder brother outcasts was so severely shaken that they went around to the other side of the dam and dug out an ants’ nest to restore their faith in human motives.

At the same time, these little treacheries create an atmosphere. On Bill and Waldo’s side of the dam, diversion became but the medium for contention. They took each other on at the long jump, the standing jump, wrist-benders, handsprings, and other tests of excellence. Then they had a row. It began over a controversial assertion by Waldo that the King of England could have you put to death for callin’ him a liar. Bill denied this he said the King of England could only have you jailed for life. To that said Waldo, “You ain’t game to call him a liar and prove it,” to which Bill justly retorted, “Who took the coward’s blow from Pointer Brindle?” and the row was formally in order. It ranged freely for subject-matter over the submerged biographies of two outcasts, recording instances of treachery, perjury, cowardice, and thieving, and even bringing in collateral infamies referring to the conduct of distant relatives.

“Whose old Aunt Beadle had to go to the nut-house?” roared Bill.

“Whose Uncle Charlie had to leave the Bank?” bellowed Waldo. Bill was outraged; an uncle’s reputation was at stake. “All right, young Waldo Peddlar, that settles it; we’re goin’ to clear out from here.”

“Who cares?” chanted Waldo.

Bill ran to grab up his clothes and the muzzle-loading pistol, and commanding Peter to heel, went off to live forever behind an adjacent mullock heap, which was to impose a special state of exile on an existence already outcast. They lived there for fully an hour, talking of how ignoble were these Peddlars, until investigation over the mullock heap discovered Waldo and Bulljo about to descend their hole, which brought them hasting back to inquire into a potent suspicion. But here was revealed something worse than treachery to the common stock of bread and jam. There was no more bread and jam. Impossible, but there it was; nothing but the heel of a loaf and a slab of uncooked ham between them and starvation. And that with the sun going down over the railway embankment and night coming up over Chinaman’s Flat. Insults to aunts and uncles were sunk in the presence of a catastrophe, and there was consternation in the bowels of the earth.

“Better have a go at the ham,” Bill said at last. “Candles ought to cook ham.”

They whittled off portions of ham and held them by turns over the candle till well greased and smoked and assumed eatable. The flavour was terrible; they had better have eaten the candle and be done with it. The last of the cocoa was measured out to minimize the taste of candle-cooked ham, which only succeeded in tainting the cocoa with the flavour of candle. The effect of this provender on the spirits of all was to be observed. Bill and Waldo made some brave efforts at optimism by talking about raiding old Quong Wah’s garden first thing in the morning, and got up a game of Stag Knife, just to prove that all was well, but it petered out without even a squabble. Poses of carefree ease were beyond the junior outcasts. They gulped repeatedly to restrain funk, and kept casting fearful glances up the hole, which was a black windowpane of terribly bright stars. Very menacing stars look, peering at you down a hole. And the dark end of the drive was full of jumping shadows, and what if some awful thing came out of it and grabbed at you with claws?

Pallid faces endured it until Bill and Waldo began to make some disorderly preparations with the hessian blanket to cover four outcasts, and then Peter let it out.

“Wha-what about goin’ home?” he said.

Bill and Waldo turned on the traitor with consternation, but the mischief was done. Bulljo at once rose, as endorsing a proposal agreeable to all.

“Pete an’ me’s goin’ home,” he said.

Bill sought to quell alarms within himself by a display of passion. “You ain’t!” he shouted. “Blokes that take the oath can’t go back on it.”

“We can!” shrilled the poltroons.

“You can’t! What did I tell yer ? Once gone, we never return.” “We do. We’re goin’ home this minute.”

“You ain’t!”

“We are!”

The situation stood at that. Then Bill suddenly renounced moral suasion and sat down on the hessian.

“
Go
home,” he said.

Then did the full horror of their situation burst on Peter and Bulljo, and anyone passing that hole would have been aware of it too, such howls came up from the depths, as from the infernal regions, where the damned are being operated on. Bill continued to sit on the hessian, regarding the craven exhibition with scorn. “
Go
home,” he said at intervals.

Waldo said nothing. He sat, as in profound meditation, staring at the ham, which seemed to mesmerize him. And as finally obeying a trance motive supplied by the ham, he took a piece of newspaper and wrapped it up. That done, he placed it in the bag.

The poltroons ceased roaring and stared expectantly at Waldo. Bill stared too, marking this conduct as strangely questionable. “What d’yer mean, wrappin’ up ham?” he demanded. “It’s no use wastin’ ham,” said Waldo, avoiding Bill’s eye. “I’m goin’ to take it home.”

Peter and Bulljo at once ranged themselves alongside Waldo, leaving Bill on the other side of the candle.

“I’m goin’ to take it home because me mother’ll want it,” said Waldo. This was bad enough, but worse was to follow. “An’ I ain’t goin’ to stay here any longer, because it ain’t fair to me mother.”

Perfidy to the very spirit of an outcast faith! Bill was outraged; what manner of man was this he had once called friend? “Yer funk it,” he said.

Waldo refused to discuss motives. By pretending that Bill was not sitting on the hessian, he was able to lug it from under him. Bill, having stated an ignoble principle in Waldo, was now forced to abide by his own rejection of it.

“Stinkin’ funk,” he said.

Waldo merely took the hessian and his bag and climbed aloft with them. The hessian dangled back, blessed signal of reprieve for Peter and Bulljo, who were hauled back to civilization with much heaving and kicking.

“Go home, stinkin’ funks!” shouted Bill to their departing feet. Viewed from aloft, the foreshortened appearance of his face in that unholy glare of light from the pit was so alarming to Peter and Bulljo that they would have bolted all the way home, but for the need of sticking close to Waldo. A ghostly walk for twittering nerves, with white mullock heaps coming at you out of the dark, and black things looking at you out of holes. Blessed to see the twinkling lights of houses once again, though not so blessed the proposals waiting for you in those houses. As they reached the Peddlar home, Peter’s father’s groom, Honky Minter, emerged from it, having been sent forth by Peter’s mother to look for him.

“And there you are!” he said indignantly. “Hookin’ it with them Peddlars, as I told your old woman would be the case. What’s the sense of bringin’ him home when he’ll come home, I sez to her. But no, I gotter go an’ look for you. And now I found you. And now you’ll get a hidin’, an’ serve you dam’ well right.”

Though a reliable friend of Peter’s as a rule, he was annoyed at this waste of good Saturday night’s boozing time, and complained of it all the way home, which forecasted for Peter other opinions of his conduct in leaving home forever to come back to it at that hour of the night. By the illogic of relief at finding that he was not lost, his mother immediately clouted him for not being lost.

“Where have you been all day, you wicked boy ? My God, the state your clothes are in, and where this instant is your brother?”

“He—he’s down a hole.”

“He’s what!”

“Down a hole up the diggin’s.”

“Oh my God, your poor brother down a hole!”

Again distraction for a lost one until it was extorted from Peter that Bill was down a hole by his own devices, and could come out of it when he so wished. By another attack of illogic for relief his head was again clouted, and himself bundled off to a penitential scrubbing, and ordered to his bed, as to a dungeon. In fact, Peter could not get to sleep until he had taken a revenge on his mother by planning to leave home first thing tomorrow to go away and die in Captain Moonlight’s cave, and then she’d be sorry.

He did not hear the return of yet one more outcast, but his mother did, because she was waiting up for him, and was there to detect the exile crawling back to civilization by the scullery window. In her hand was The Rod.

So there was the whole business back at starting-point, and that very injustice which had driven an outcast from the home retorted on him for coming back to it. As Bill said to Peter next day—it being Sunday, and they mitigating a little the ill ease of Sunday clothes by sitting in a confined space behind the fowlhouse —“They don’t want a bloke at home; they hate a bloke, but if a bloke clears out he gets a hiding. So how the hell is a bloke to get even with them?”

“What about chuckin’ stones on the roof?” suggested Peter. “Chuckin’ stones on roofs is only good enough for kids,” said Bill with gloom. “No, a bloke wants to get even with them so they’ll know they’ve gone too far now, an’ that’s one up against their duckhouse. So how’d it be if a bloke committed suicide by layin’ with his stomach on the sharp edge of the fence?”

Peter excused himself from this system of reprisals on the home, but Bill’s darkened soul required a Roman end to injustice; so he committed suicide by hanging himself over a paling fence in an attitude of extreme discomfort for fully five minutes.

I REMEMBER my grand-uncle, an octogenarian, sad automaton of what he used to be, stooping under eucalyptus-trees with a gun in his hand.

The neighbours’ houses, abutting on our yard, left him little room; yet he imagined limitless space in some barren part of Australia, and the companionship of a dog visible only to himself. Each night the old man left out a plate of bones for “Shag”; and, regularly, one of us emptied the dish, then put it back again.

In 1840, this ancient (before he became an ancient), staggering across stringy-bark ranges, had all but died of starvation. Nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Without powder, his “Joe Manton” wasn’t any use to him; so he knocked out the flints, and, dropping them into his mouth to moisten it, went in search of a waterhole.