Best Australian Short Stories (41 page)

“The engine was no good,” he said. “It kept breaking down. It cost me nearly all I earned and it was hungry on petrol. I had to sell it to pay back what I borrowed and get my fare home.”

“Oh, Peter,” my mother said, putting her arms round him. “You poor dear. I knew something was wrong.”

“Mother reckoned it was the food,” I said. “She reckoned you weren’t getting your proper meals.”

“I’ll make you a cup of tea, Peter,” my mother said bustling over to the stove and pushing another piece of wood into it. “Then I’ll get you some breakfast.”

“By golly, that sounds a bit of all right,” my father said then. This was the first time since he had walked in that he had sounded like his old self.

My mother hurried about the kitchen and my father talked a bit more. “I thought I was going to do well at first,” he said. “But the engine was too old. It was always spare parts. It ate up all I earned.”

He talked on about the trip. I had got over my surprise at seeing him walk in and now wanted to know all about the pepper-tree. “Did you see the pepper-tree, dad?” I asked quickly.

He didn’t seem to hear so I asked him again. I was standing right in front of him and then to my surprise I saw that he was not looking at me but at something far away.

“Yes, boy, I saw it all right.” His voice was not like I knew it with little hills and hollows in it, but flat and sad. My father didn’t say any more for what seemed a long time.

“It was a little runt of a tree, boy—and a little backyard.”

He didn’t say any more then and he never spoke of the pepper-tree—or the Rolls again.

“HE can’t get out; he can’t get a hold of it,” Morvenna cried. She thrust suddenly with the end of a twig, trying to push the ant up the shifting sand-slope of the pit. But her brother, lying opposite her, filled his cheeks with air and blew hard. The ant fell back to the pit-bottom, and in a moment the little fury of jaws burst out at it, seized it, vanished again. Only a flurry of sand in the bottom of the little pit marked for a few seconds the ant’s last struggle.

The two children sat up slowly, breathing again. They looked at each other with a kind of guilt. Max’s face was quite red; Morvenna’s mouth was open.

“How many would he kill, I wonder?” Max said. “That’s three we’ve given him, but they were all little ones. I’ll get a meat-ant and see what he does.”

“Oh, no, Max, don’t, don’t. I don’t want you to.” Morvenna clenched her hands, but she could not help looking round in the grass for the meat-ant track that led to the ant-hill farther up the slope. Max went across to it, holding his twig, and bent down. Morvenna gave a scream. “If you do, Maxie, I’ll kill the lion. I will, truly.”

“Don’t you dare,” Max said. “It’s the first ant-lion we’ve ever seen and we might never find another. I want to show it to everyone.” He came back, holding his twig gingerly and turning it from end to end as the red ant rushed along it. Meat-ants could bite.

“Now I’ll put it in,” he said. “Look, Morv.” He shook the twig hard over the little pit, but the ant was obstinate and clung. Angry, intent, he finally dislodged it with a blade of grass.

Morvenna sat with her hands over her eyes. “No, I won’t look,” she said. “It’s awful of you.”

But the ant was in the pit. She peered through the crack between her fingers and saw it. It looked big and strong, frenziedly pulling down the sand of the slope in its struggle to escape. Perhaps it might get away. She took down her hands and leant forward.

In their minds the ant and its arena of battle enlarged, filled the whole world. Under the sand at the pit-bottom crouched the lion, big as a real lion, waiting for the ant to slide down a little farther. But this one was so big, bigger than the ant-lion itself. Max said, “Now we’ll see some sport.”

The ant was puzzled at the sand that slipped so treacherously and persistently away as it climbed. It stopped, slid, went down almost to the bottom. For a moment there was a stir in the sand there, and Morvenna jumped. The ant might have seen it, too; at any rate it gathered all its strength and made a rush at the slope. The sand slid quickly, but the ant was determined; he had almost reached the top. “Good ant, good ant,” Morvenna cried; but Max pushed with his twig, and down went the ant to the bottom.

For a moment nothing happened. “It’s too big,” Max said, and his lips pursed. The two children stared down, lying on their stomachs, heads almost together. The ant hesitated, and began to struggle up against the slope.

But now the ant-lion moved. Quick, dextrous, it thrust its stumpy forelegs from the sand and began to jerk its head, heavy and tool- like. Sand flew up, hindering the big ant, setting the walls slipping down. “Ah,” Max breathed. “Look at that now.”

The ant slipped and slipped, staying in the one place. It was growing tired, but it was clearly in a panic; its legs worked frantically. The hot shadows of the tree above moved across and across; the cicadas filled the afternoon with their monotonous shrill. The battle swayed. Morvenna moved aside; her rib was against a knotted root of the tree; and as she moved Max gave a shout of triumph. “Oh, what happened?” She thrust him aside and peered down.

The ant-lion had seized the meat-ant by one leg. Those relentless tool-jaws hung on, like the jaws of a dingo harassing a sheep. The ant, caught at last, was putting out a desperate effort; his free legs thrashed wildly, he made a little headway, but the weight of the grub-like creature braced against him was too much, and he could find nothing to grip.

“I ought to save him,” Morvenna thought. “I oughtn’t to let...Mother would call it cruelty to animals.” But she no longer wanted to put down her twig, even if Max would let her. Shamed, enraptured, she clung to the tree-root with one hand and stared down.

The ant grew weaker, slower, his struggles more spasmodic. The lion saw his chance now; he released the leg and made for the ant’s body, seizing him by the abdomen. There was a wild scurry in the pit now, the ant rearing in the fountaining sand. They could see those shovel-jaws working.

The silence was the strangest thing, Morvenna thought. Round them the afternoon continued; a wagtail hopped on the fence, other ants ran placidly about their business, the creek below made its endless liquid noise over the rocks; but to the two children all had shrunk to the dimensions of the pit, and the creatures in it, engaged in their soundless struggle, plunged and reared enormous. The golden air should have been full of their shrieks and groanings.

Now the ant fell. All was over; his waist almost severed, his legs quivering in the air, he lay helpless. How quickly, how ruthlessly, the ant-lion pulled him down, avoiding the last kicks of those thin useless legs, touching him, severing abdomen from body, hiding him in the sand to serve for larder, where the other ants lay. The creature seemed like a little machine, a tool for some energy that possessed him; hideous, swift, he sent a shudder through Morvenna as she watched him.

Slowly, slowly the lion and his victim sank into the sand. Now they were only humps, sand-covered; now they had vanished. There lay the pit, still and innocent, its contours unchanged.

Max sat up slowly. His eyes looked large and dark.

“Are you going to put in another ?” Morvenna asked. She half- hoped, half-feared it.

“No,” Max said. He stood up, not looking at the pit or at Morvenna. “Enough’s enough.”

“Are you going to bring Harry down and show it to him?” Morvenna persisted.

“Oh, shut up,” said Max. He stood uncertainly for a moment, detaching himself from the scene, from the afternoon, from Morvenna. Then he set off down the creek-bank, running faster and faster. Morvenna stood hesitating; then she too began to run. At last they stopped, far from the pit, exhausted and panting.

“What shall we do now ?” Morvenna said.

ANDERSON, Ethel (1883–1958). Born of Australian parents at Leamington, England; educated at the Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School. Spent most of her childhood at Rangamatty, near Picton in New South Wales. Married Brigadier-General A. T. Anderson, and lived for some years on the Indian frontier. Publications include three books of verse, two collections of essays, and three books of stories—
Indian Tales
(1948),
At Parramatta
(1956), and
Little Ghost
s (1959).

ASTLEY, William (“Price Warung”), 1855–1911. Born at Liverpool, England. His parents brought him to Melbourne when he was four years old. Journalist in Victoria, Tasmania (where he married), and Sydney, where he edited the
Australian Workman
. In his later years he lived in Sydney, sometimes penuriously, writing his stories of the convict days for which he became famous. He said that his interest in the convicts was first aroused by meeting, in his boyhood, a convict absconder, and he wrote several books on the theme, arousing some historical controversy by his accounts of the secret society of convicts which he called “The Ring”.

BARNARD, Marjorie. Born at Ashfield, New South Wales, in 1897; educated at Sydney Girls’ High School and at the University of Sydney. Was Librarian at Sydney Teachers’ College and later at the C.S.I.R.O. Co-author, with Flora Eldershaw, under the pen-name “M. Barnard Eldershaw”, of two novels,
A House is Built
(1929) and
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
(1947). Under her own name she has published a collection of stories,
The Persimmon Tree
(1943); and works of history, including
Macquarie’s World
(1941),
Australian Outline (
1943), and
A History of Australia
(1962).

BAYLEBRIDGE, William. See Blocksidge.

BLOCKSIDGE, William (“William Baylebridge”), 1883–1942. Born in Brisbane, the son of an estate agent, and educated at Brisbane Grammar School. He travelled in Europe and the Middle East for some years, eventually returning to settle in Sydney. He is best known for his poetry, especially the sonnet sequence
Love Redeemed
, and
This Vital Flesh
, difficult, awkward work embodying Nietzschean and Hegelian ideas.

BROTHERS, Robert. No biographical details available. Believed to have been born in New Zealand and, after living for some time in Sydney in the early 1900s, to have gone to South Africa.

CAMPBELL, David. Born at Ellerslie, Adelong, New South Wales, in 1915; educated at The King’s School, Parramatta, and at Cambridge, where he graduated in Arts and played football for England against Ireland and Wales. During World War II he was a pilot in the RAAF and was awarded the D.F.C. and bar. Married, with three children, he runs a property near Bungendore, N.S.W. Has published five volumes of verse and a collection of short stories, Evening Under Lamplight (1950).

CASEY, Gavin (1907–1964). Born at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, educated at State schools and the Kalgoorlie School of Mines. Worked on the
Daily News
, Perth, and for the Department of Information during and after World War II. Publications include two collections of stories,
It’s Harder for Girls
(1942), and
Birds of a Feather
(1943); and the novels,
Downhill is Easier
(1946),
The Wits Are Out
(1948),
City of Men
(1950),
Snowball
(1958), and
Amid the Plenty
(1962).

CHARLWOOD, D. E. Born in Melbourne in 1915; educated at Frankston High School. Served as a navigator with the RAAF in Europe during World War H, then joined the Department of Civil Aviation, working on air traffic control. Married, with three daughters. Has published an account of his wartime experiences with Bomber Command,
No Moon Tonight
(1956); a novel,
All the Green Year
(1965); and a collection of short stories,
An Afternoon of Time
(1966).

COWAN, Peter. Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1914, where he received his early education. After working at various jobs in city and country, took an Arts degree at the University of Western Australia. Served with the RAAF during World War H. Is now senior lecturer in English at Scots College, Perth, and a tutor at the University. Has published three collections of stories,
Drift
(1944),
The Unploughed Land
(1959), and
The Empty Street
(1965); and two novels,
Summer
(1964) and
Seed
(1966).