For Love Alone (25 page)

Jerry looked at her and, turning towards her with a grand gesture, began to play to her. It was unbelievable! Teresa stared wildly round at the others, cuddling, and at Ellen with her hands folded in her lap, sitting quite straight. Should she laugh to show that she knew it was a joke? They did not laugh.

When Jerry finished, they clapped, he grinned and Ellen said: “That was real pretty, Jerry,” once more quite softly, speaking as they did.

“Oh, yes, it was pretty,” said Teresa hastily, supposing it was a bizarre, stupid joke.

“Play again, Jerry,” cried his sister. “Play ‘The Last Rose of Summer'.”

“No, I'll play ‘Mary, Gentle Mary',” said the boy, and once more turning to Ellen, he began to drag his bow over the shrieking, spitting, hawking strings; not a note of the tune came out of them, though Rhoda's voice could be heard humming it.

Teresa gave a hunted look round. They were brutally, devilishly spoofing Ellen and her, but mostly Ellen, who was flushed, and in a pretty admiration of the young man.

“Let's go,” she said to Ellen.

“Oh, not now,” replied her cousin affectionately.

“Come out into the kitchen a minute.”

“What for?”

“I'm taking Ellen into the kitchen and don't you follow,” laughed Jerry, pulling the willing woman to her feet and taking her out into the kitchen, with his hands still clasped in both of hers.

The two stayed out while the others kept shouting jokes, saying that it was darker still in the barn, and repeating that Ellen, that Missy, spent three hours in the old car with Jerry the night before. “Doing what, I wonder? Come on, tell us, Ellen, what went on in the old car? What is he like? Is he good?”

The couple stayed in the kitchen a long time, and then reappeared unconcernedly, as if they had just finished washing the dishes. Teresa was so upset that she started to go away several times, hoping that Ellen would put on her hat too. Ellen was not happy; she seemed to doubt, too, whether some part of this was not a mean trick, but she was too weak-willed to refuse them.

It was midnight when they left the house. The rain had stopped, but a high wind was blowing and clouds rolled fast over them.

“That old tree will come down on their heads, some night,” said Ellen, looking up.

Walking down the road, she pulled on her gloves and tied on her oilskin cap. Teresa seemed to hear through the wind yells of laughter
from the Carlins' sitting-room where Rhoda, Jerry, and Roger must be nearly killing themselves over the antics of the two old maids, and Ellen's peachy bloom of love, come out on her soft cheeks, and the credulous, girlish look in her eyes when she glanced up at Jerry, with his howling violin.

“Never will I marry the neighbour's son,” she said to herself. “What misery, what shame!” And all because Ellen had not the courage to look farther afield.

They were mounting the long hill at the top of which stood the Patons' cottage, concealed by roadside eucalypts and a wood of turpentine. Ellen did not speak.

Just after they had passed the shuttered cottage in the wood, a human yell pealed out through the wood, marvellously loud, ringing through the air as if carried by the high airs and after two or three shouts, dying slowly, groaning away into the empty grass paddock beside them, as if tingling in the grass roots as they were treading on the neighbouring ruts. The young girl, in a paroxysm too great for fear, looked at her cousin, expecting some violent sign in her. Ellen lowered her head and trudged on against the hill. It was inconceivable! When she was opening her mouth to speak to Ellen, as if out of her own mouth, the cry pealed again, a little farther behind, but ringing tremendous, from the things on the land, from some martyred and bleeding field, or a giant old tree being murdered in the wood there. What a cry! And there again!

When it had died away again, Teresa said: “Didn't you hear that yell? What is it?”

Ellen, bending her head a little farther forward, hurried her step.

“Ellen, Ellen,” she panted, “didn't you hear that awful cry?”

A terrible thought went through her head like lightning, that she was mad, or had herself uttered the cry; that was why Ellen did not answer, but pressed on. Was she asleep? Was this a nightmare? What was it, that that timid woman, hearing this thing on a country
road at night, yes, at any time, in bright sunlight too, would not start and run? Was it herself?

“Ellen?”

“Come along,” said the woman.

“Didn't you hear it?”

There was a breathing-space, then. “Do come along,” said the woman.

“What is it? Oh, Ellen, what is it?”

“You don't know, so don't worry,” muttered Ellen.

Teresa was not afraid, but the cry was too great to be that of hunting, pursuing things. Who was concealed in that shut house? Was it one of the inaudible sounds of creation, suddenly by a freak made audible to them? How did Ellen, that stupid thing, know how to take it, if so? Was Ellen also a sensitive, a living soul? Was it the howl of empty Creation, horrified at being there with itself in its singleness? Or is it the cry of the chase I am on, said the young girl? At any rate, if the cry is here, I must be off; where the cry is, that lonely, dreadful cry, I must be off. Tomorrow I will go over the hills yonder.

When they came in, Aunt Teresa was sitting up for them, gentle and affectionate. She kissed her daughter warmly and when Ellen's door was shut, she kept her niece talking a few minutes.

“Are you going walking tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes.”

“In the morning or the afternoon?”

“Oh, straight away. I only want to take a few days, then I must look for a job.”

“What kind of a job?”

“As a typist.”

“Ellen was such a good typist, the best in the Department, and much good it did 'er,” said the aunt.

Teresa was silent.

“Do you know which way you're going?”

“No, I don't know the way but I'll take the road that goes straight across the creek.”

“Do you think that goes to ‘Arper's Ferry?” she asked. “You don't mind walking off by yourself? It seems your friends went in groups.”

“What friends?”

“Your university friends.”

“I have no university friends, I just heard of them through a Mr Crow, who is there.”

Aunt Teresa pressed her, and she asked: “What can happen to me?”

Aunt Teresa looked at her with haunted eyes, almost angry, “They can tear you.”

“What do you mean?” asked the girl, startled. She thought her aunt referred to the murderers lurking possibly round Harper's Ferry. What did her aunt murmur in reply? Horrible things, old wives' tales. Teresa took no notice of this bogy talk but said she would be off in the morning, she could not wait, she had little money.

Her aunt rose, taking the kerosene lamp so that the shadows danced about like immense moths. Teresa hesitated and then boldly said: “Down the road, there was a cry, someone yelled out.”

“Yes,” said her aunt, coming back to the table and looking down at her grotesquely above the yellowing lamp, her dark eyes shining like idol's eyes, “it's a madman who lives there with ‘is mother. She won't even go to town in case ‘e needs her. Suppose ‘e got out one night and you met ‘im?”

“A madman!”

“Oh, ‘e's chained up, ‘e can't get out.”

“Why don't they take him away?”

“‘Is mother says she will kill 'erself if they do.”

Teresa, after a little thought, asked how old he was. He was twenty-eight.

“Did he ever have a wife?” she continued, thoughtfully.

“The madman was about to get married when ‘is madness came upon ‘im, lucky for the young girl, she just escaped a terrible thing. She's living down in the valley now.”

“She didn't get married?”

“They said she was in love with this man and that she still ‘asn't given up ‘ope, but ‘is case is ‘opeless.”

“Oh, why didn't they let them get married?” cried Teresa. “Oh, the poor things! But how can they expect mad people to get better if they have no husbands and wives? Why, I should go mad if they shut me up that way. Why, we would all go mad, if we were shut up and not allowed to get married.”

Aunt Teresa explained to her how the mad must never procreate; but Teresa did not listen. She thought of the madman, down in the house in the wood, shut in with his old mother. She thought someone ought to go and let him out, but she said nothing about this to her aunt. Her aunt kissed her, saying: “You know where to go and where to put your things, Little Treasure. I promised my dear sister I'd look after you and I've always thought of you just like my own daughter. Your mother was a brave woman, a very serious woman. She never had a chance or I think she would have been quite a brainy woman. But when she wanted her own way, she got it. And so will you. You are a good girl—”

Teresa did not listen to her as she prattled on, for she felt she got no clue to her character or future in this, but when she heard that she would get her way she looked attentively at her aunt. “Do you mean that? I have will power?”

“You were always a very firm little thing.”

Teresa thought: “Ah! Good! Then it is all right, in that case, I know I will find a man and get married, despite what they say at home.”

She kissed her aunt good night affectionately and went off to bed, but she did not sleep for a long while, disturbed by the moon and by the thought of the lonely house of the madman.

T
here are many abandoned orchards in the valley. Farmlands are under wild grass, crooked apple-trees turning back to nature lean over lichened palings with festoons and knots of sour apples, yellow and streaked russet. The waters that feed Narara Creek trickle down bluffs and empty light meadows; the doors hang from their frames in slate-coloured weatherboard farmhouses, broken open by the seasons.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, Teresa, a pack on her back, was trudging along an unknown road, not five miles from her aunt's orchard. After she had heard her uncle and aunt go down the orchard at sunrise, she had got up, taken tea from the big blue breakfast pot where it was stewing for their return, and strapped together a bundle for her shoulder.

At the sound, Ellen had got up, but let her go without a protest. There was no highway north at this point, but there were roads which twisted through the valley and which must join the great northern road, which began a few miles further on. She had at first
asked farmers, women she saw feeding their chickens, where was the Newcastle road? They had very vague ideas, but had pointed to the western side of the valley and there she had at first gone.

The weather cleared up about two in the afternoon, the clouds piling away to the north-west and the washed-out sky beginning to clear. It was hot by four, but coolness still came out of the drenched lands.

At this moment she was following a broad cart-track under the shoulder of a stony hill and curving back south. She had eaten a cold-meat sandwich and some chocolate, the same diet that Lance ate when away over the week-end, but now she was very tired. She hardly knew what she was doing. She no longer looked for the north road but trudged patiently along the track she had got on to, hoping vaguely that at some moment or other she would turn into something better. She was hot and her head thumped. She could not think any more; phrases and ideas from last night had begun to turn themselves round in her head and she imagined she saw things alongside the road, tails of things disappearing, shadows twitching. It was not fear, it was the delirium of fatigue.

She had taken no hat with her, and perhaps she had got too hot in the sun.

“Your dead mother had very serious qualities....”

Who could worry about the qualities of a dead woman? If, for example, she had known what her mother's qualities had been, and what she had wanted, and if she had succeeded in getting it, she might know something about how to proceed now.

“What you will to have you will get....”

But will what? It seemed to her that she was just willing without knowing what it was she wanted. She was out here with her will only and no plan, no intelligence. She trudged on. What was she doing here? What was it for? Why Harper's Ferry? Perhaps it was sixty miles away. Did you pay at Harper's Ferry? She set her teeth, because she knew that if she gave up,
they
would get her, she would be dragged in, she would never get away, she would go back, become
their slave, until she was sixty or sixty-five, never know how things were in the world, be what they wanted, an old maid. That, never. She felt rigid as the iron in her will. They would never get her; it would stand there till the end of her day. Also, she would never marry the neighbour's son as a last expedient.

What a valley! Great, fruitful, silent as paradise. She would have liked to go into one of the old orchards and sleep, but the ground was very wet. She had not brought a ground sheet, or a blanket. She might have thought of that when everyone took one, walking.

Nearly two years ago it was that she and the Carlins had gone to that cleft in the western hills; they had their car running then. The tree-ferns, eucalypts, and other things were very frondy, slender, green and delicate; it was cool and wet there. Flying foxes dropped from tree to tree, birds sang. At the top was dry bracken country, open cleared land, and a few sheds which had looked very comfortable in the setting sun. There had been some talk about dossing down in one of them, for a lark, a rather indecent lark, as things were looked at among the respectable families. Tom had said: “Tell me what you will say when you make love to a man.”

“I don't know now, I will know then.”

How glorious to make a declaration to a man, say just what she felt, throw prudence away, be herself, make love generously to a beautiful man
Thou art beautiful, my beloved; thou art as
—If she could say that to the right man, who would go to Harper's Ferry? Who would be so ridiculous as to be out on a lonely road going nowhere? Above, the tall spray of green fronds and here the sweet hot smell of bush flowers—but that was two years ago. Tom, Tom's wife. She was dizzy with fatigue, hunger, and her tattered mind. She was profoundly troubled but did not clearly remember why. She could not remember a single trouble.