Best Australian Short Stories (27 page)

It was later in the day when the sun had left the sill that I saw the window opened and a hand come out to gather the persimmons. I saw a woman’s figure against the curtains. She lived there. It was her window opposite mine.

Often now the window was open. That in itself was like the breaking of a bud. A bowl of thick cream pottery shaped like a boat appeared on the sill. It was planted, I think, with bulbs. She used to water it with one of those tiny, long-spouted, hand-painted cans that you use for refilling vases, and I saw her gingerly loosening the earth with a silver table fork. She did not look up or across the street. Not once.

Sometimes on my leisurely walks I passed her in the street. I knew her quite well now, the texture of her skin, her hands, the set of her clothes, her movements—the way you know people when you are sure you will never be put to the test of speaking to them. I could have found out her name quite easily. I had only to walk into the vestibule of her ‘block and read it in the list of tenants or consult the visiting card on her door. I never did.

She was a lonely woman and so was I. That was a barrier not a link. Lonely women have something to guard. I was not exactly lonely. I had stood my life on a shelf, that was all. I could have had a dozen friends round me all day long. But there was not a friend that I loved and trusted above all the others, no lover, secret or declared. She had, I suppose, some nutrient hinterland on which she drew.

The bulbs in her bowl were shooting, I could see the pale new- green spears standing out of the dark loam. I wondered what they would be. I expected tulips, I don’t know why. Her window was open all day long now. Very fine thin curtains hung in front of it and these were never parted; sometimes they moved, but it was only in the breeze.

The trees in the street showed green now, thick with budded leaves. The shadow pattern on my wall was intricate and rich, no longer an austere winter pattern as it had been at first. Even the movement of the branches in the wind seemed different. I used to lie looking at the shadow when I rested in the afternoon—I was always tired then, and so more permeable to impressions. I’d think about the buds, how pale and tender they were but how implacable, the way an unborn child is implacable. If man’s world were in ashes the spring would still come. I watched the moving pattern and my heart stirred with it in frail, half-sweet melancholy.

One afternoon I looked out instead of in. It was growing late and the sun would soon be gone, but it was warm. There was gold dust in the air, the sunlight had thickened. The shadows of trees and buildings fell, as they sometimes do on a fortunate day, with dramatic grace. She was standing there just behind the curtains in a long dark wrap, as if she had come from her bath and was going to dress early for the evening. She stood so long and so still, staring out—I thought at the budding trees—that tension began to accumulate in my mind. My blood ticked like a clock. Very slowly she raised her arms and the gown fell from her. She stood there naked, behind the veil of the curtains, the scarcely distinguishable but unmistakable form of a woman whose face was in shadow.

I turned away. The shadow of the burgeoning bough was on the white wall. I thought my heart would break.

WHEN horses gallop at night, the sound is mysterious. There was Billy, frowzy with sleep, ambling through silence downhill on a drooping nighthorse. The frost, after a week of rain, had sharpened the hoof-falls. The horse’s paunch creaked, and Billy was aware of the silence. He was aware of the cemetery on the dark ridge where the owls moped.

Riding through star-shade, his mind tasted honey. That grandmother witch of a gaunt gum had a wild-bees’ hive in its branches. And the boy was assured until a filly whinnied. The pace of the nighthorse quickened, and he rode rigid. And to his heart-beats the horses were suddenly galloping. They crossed the fearful land-scape of an earlier dawn. Billy whooped to his courage, and his whip sang in the frost.

Up the hard road he chased his phantoms, neck and neck with fear. But the old mare was a stayer, and on the hill-crest day was breaking. Serpent-heads tossed in the first light; a breakaway gelding bucked, exploding, down the skyline; but the mob came in to the whip. In the heavy stockyard the horses stood steaming, hock-deep in mud.

Billy’s flat hand clapped the mare’s withers. Hobbled, she browsed a stubble of frost. The rabbiting-pack yelled, leaping like lions up the wire net of their yard. And slowly the morning came over Bald Hill, whistling a tune of gold. The great clatter sent the ghosts packing, and here were the stockmen to daunt them.

“Morning, Billy. Morning, Billy.”

Billy, shy and proud, stood astride like his father, glad to be part of the morning bustle. Dogs snuffed for rats between the slabs of the stall; horses were led out from the yard and saddled up; in twos and threes the men rode off to work between the misty gumtrees. The smell of their tobacco-smoke remained. And, to forget a sudden sadness, Billy turned and ran a hard race down the rutted road to the homestead.

II

“And I wasn’t frightened, neither.”

Lined with porridge and cream and the fat meat of chops, Billy could taunt his sister and any old ghost.

“It was easy,” he said. “While Len’s sick, I’ll get the horses in every morning. You’re only a girl.”

“I’m older than you are.”

“That doesn’t count.”

But Janet only smiled. Her blue eyes were in their corners and she looked far away. Her indifference was elaborate, her smile mocked in secret.

“Let’s go to dad’s office and squash flies,” she said.

The office was a dark high room in the old part of the house. A giant roll-top desk stood open in the light from the one window, where dead fingers of vine gripped the gauze. A few early blow-flies staggered up the panes. They were easy to catch, and made a fine mess when slammed in a ledger.

The fair heads touched. And “Ach!” said Billy, twisting his neck and screwing up his face, eyeing the open page obliquely with the pleasure of disgust. “Just look at that one, Jan.”

The fly had spread out like a blot over the neat figures: 3000 weather weaners at 16s. 10d. made one broad stain.

Janet puckered a sweet angel’s nose, and her eyes were wide and bright. But she turned to trace a signature cut sharply in the glass pane.

“A. G. Wise,” she spelt out at length. “Know who he was ?

“Of course.” Billy was busy.

“He went mad and cut his name in the pane with a diamond ring.”

“I know,” said Billy, loud with impatience. “I know.”

“Look, Billy, feel it. Give me your finger. He died and he’s buried over in the cemetery. He must have been a silly old man, don’t you think ?”

“I know all that,” Billy said. “I knew all that before you did. He buried his fortune at the front gate.”

“He must have been a silly old man.” And then, in joyous fright, “Look out, here comes the colonel!”

Janet slipped like a slim wind over the sill and under the swinging gauze. Her head bobbed once, gold, and was gone, leaving Billy in panic in the dim office, holding the ledger.

Clop, clop, clop!

Colonel Graham’s steady footsteps rang on the veranda. So Billy walked when he thought of it, firmly, in meditation, aping the big man he feared. But this was no time for laughter; he was trapped. He ran to the window, papers blew about him in the draught. He grabbed at them, listened, and dived to crouch, pale, in the knee-cavity of the desk.

Clop! and the window banged down. He could see his father’s tan boots amongst the papers, and, hugging the telltale ledger, he prayed, “Please, God!” But God would not listen to him, for he had been killing flies. This was what came of it. And he thought of those yellow blots with shame and hatred.

A large red hand was picking up the papers. The backs of the fingers were tufted with brown hair. Billy watched, fascinated. And then from still eyes, like a cornered animal, he stared into his father’s wind-veined face. His own cheeks flushed. How absurd he must look!

“Come out of it! What are you doing there?”

Billy could not explain, but laid the ledger on the desk. “I wasn’t reading it,” he said. “I promise.”

He could have bitten his tongue out for this remark, and his neck burned. He felt his father’s remote eyes looking down on him, and the glassy sneers of the deer-heads round the walls.

“You know I won’t have you children making a bear-garden of the office!”

But the big man was suddenly embarrassed, feeling the gulf between himself and his son. And he made excuses. He was a busy man, without time to reach their immature minds. At any rate, one was enough. And he shrugged. His wife seemed to give up her whole time to them. But he was troubled by the thought of two locked doors facing one another at the end of a passageway.

“All right, old chap,” he said, fumbling. “No trouble with the horses this morning? That’s the boy. Game for tomorrow? Good.”

And he nodded his head, winking, manly, buffeting Billy with. restraint on the chest.

“All right, old chap. Run along now.”

Billy ran along. His feet beat fiercely on the veranda. And hear- ing them, his father sat perplexed. He shook his head. Must see more of the children. But what the devil was his son doing under the desk? He liked a boy to stand up for himself. And he squared his shoulders and opened the ledger.

“Billy!”

But Billy was chasing Janet through the orchard, stumbling over the furrows between the pink cherries and the clouded pears. “I’ll kill you!” he cried. “It was your fault. I’ll murder you when I catch you.”

And he ran panting, with a pain in his chest, fiercely forgetting, after long-legged Janet with her short flying skirt and bobbing hair, who slipped through the fence and was away like the wind over the green paddocks.

“You can’t catch me,” sang Janet, looking back through fair hair. And, “Ha ha!” she mocked from the graveyard. Then she was lost, swallowed up. And the great pines sighed.

“Ah!” said the black pines, leaning over. Brier-roots clutched the stone. Their tangled arms had torn the netting from the fence, and the gate hung loose on one hinge.

“Jan-et!”

Billy searched amongst the tombstones, peering here, peering there, through the bare briers in the shadow of the pints. “Janet! Come out, I know you’re here.”

But he was alone.

“Janet”—almost sobbing—”come out, Jan. Where are you? I won’t touch you. I give in. Promise.”

Lost amongst the grave gravestones.

“Please, Jan.”

And there she was, balancing, with one leg out and arms wide, on a leaning tombstone, smiling her secret smile. She stood still in sunlight on the stone, flushed from her run and victory, and daffodils were bright below her.

“What did he say ?” she said.

“Not much.” Billy turned away, diffident, indifferent.

“Go on, tell me, Billy.”

“He didn’t say anything.” And Billy scowled.

“I’ll bet he said, ‘Keep out of the office!’ “And Janet began to chant, “Keep out of the office! Keep out of the office!” till Billy, cheered, joined in.

“Well, old chap,” he said in a deep voice. “Any trouble with the horses, old chap?”

Their pealing laughter rang through the graveyard. Billy strode, clop, clop.

“No trouble, eh? That’s the chap.”

“Oh!” Janet was giggling. “Oh!” merrily mocking. They were both happy with the intimacy of this secret between them. And, coming down from her tombstone, she walked with him arm-in-arm across the graves. The daffodils shook in the wind, and the hips of the briers danced, glinting.

“Here’s old Wise’s grave,” said Janet, and she lifted a pincushion of moss from the rotting granite. “‘The loving husband of Phillipa Sarah.’ Phillipa! Oh! Phillipa Sarah!”

The young heads touched beneath the pines, and their laughter was mingled.

“Silly old Wise,” Janet said, and she stamped up and down the grave. Death, what was death on a fine morning? A fraud like Santa Claus. And she mocked the pious faces and don’ts and hush, claiming a victory over that strange world of grownups where death had a meaning.

Billy stamped, too. And, to outdo his sister, who was only a girl, he had a good idea. The thin stream played on the tombstone. So much for old Wise. Happily the children straggled back through the sharp sunlight to the house for lunch.

III

Clamour!

The alarm clock was crowing in the children’s sleepout to the dark morning. Billy leapt from bed and was half dressed when his teeth began to chatter. He looked out fearfully through the wire gauze. The stars were high and pale, and the far pines stood darkly, like fists, against the coming light. A terrible dread ran its fingers up Billy’s spine.

“I’m sorry, God. I’m sorry, truly, God.”

Through the wall, he could hear his father’s steady breathing. “Jan, are you awake?”

A whisper, “Yes, Billy.”

“It’s terribly dark, isn’t it? I wish…”

And he sat down on Janet’s bed. She could feel him shiver, and suddenly she clutched him to protect him, thrilling at the same time with the panicky joy of fear.