Beyond the Black Stump (17 page)

“I don’t know why you should have thought that,” she retorted. “I just don’t want to marry anyone, now or next
month or any time. As soon as Elspeth gets through college, in a year from now, I want to go to England.”

He said nothing, and they stood in silence for a minute. “It’s all right for you,” she said. “You’ve travelled about the world. You know what England’s like, but I don’t. You’ve been to France. I want to go to France, and Italy, too. You’ve been to other places, and seen how other people live. I’ve only seen Perth. I want to see what happens in the rest of the world, outside the Lunatic.”

It was in his mind to say that she wanted to see America, but he had the good sense not to. He stood with her in the moonlight very conscious of her, slim and straight beside him. “I suppose that’s reasonable,” he said reluctantly, at last.

“Of course it’s reasonable,” she said. “There’s another thing, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I wouldn’t want to marry you, David. Not that I don’t like you. But we’d fight like cat and dog, right from the word go.”

“I don’t think we would.”

“I’m quite sure we would. We were fighting like cat and dog only a minute ago.”

“That’s different. That was over the Americans.”

“If it wasn’t the Americans it would be something else. We don’t get on well enough to marry, David. It wouldn’t work.” She paused. “There’s only one reason why you asked me to marry you.”

“What’s that?”

“Because I’m the only girl here in the Lunatic, just at the moment.”

That stung him. “If that’s all you think of me, we’d better cut this short,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to be nasty,” she said gently. “I didn’t really, David. It cuts both ways, you know. If I married you, I suppose it would be for the same reason, because there aren’t so many young men in this part of the country. But that’s not the right way to set about a thing like marrying. One might make a terrible mistake that way. And I’m a Catholic; when I marry, I marry for good.”

“I suppose it’s a point against me that I’m Church of England,” he said a little bitterly. “I haven’t been for the last three years, but I don’t suppose that matters.”

She shook her head. “That wouldn’t worry me,” she said. “I suppose we aren’t very strict at Laragh. But I certainly wouldn’t marry anyone unless I was absolutely sure that it was going to last.”

“I
am
sure,” he said.

She looked at him doubtfully, a little shaken by the conviction in his voice. “You can’t possibly be,” she said. “How many girls have you met in the last three years, David? Really met, I mean, to talk to like this?”

He was silent. “Not very many,” he said reluctantly at last.

She nodded. “You ought to get away from here,” she said. “Get away for a holiday, David—go down to Perth, go to dances and parties and get to know some girls.” She smiled at him. “If you did that and still wanted to marry me, perhaps I’d take it as a compliment. More than I do now.”

“It was meant as one.”

“I know it was, David. It was very sweet of you. But the answer’s no, just the same.”

They stood in silence for a long time. At last he said, “Well, that puts the lid on it. I suppose you’d rather that we didn’t go on meeting?”

She thought for a moment, reluctant to break off the friendship. “I’d be sorry if that happened,” she said, “but it’s up to you. So long as you can realise that I’m not marrying you or anybody else for a long time, I don’t see why we shouldn’t meet. There aren’t so many people of our age here in the Lunatic. But if you think it’s not going to work out, we’ll have to give it away.”

“Okay,” he said heavily, “we’ll leave it like that.” He turned towards his jeep.

“Good-night, David,” she said in a small voice. “I’m terribly sorry.”

They got into their jeeps, the starters groaned, and the jeeps moved off towards the track beside the fence, David following in her dust. They parted where the tracks diverged beside the cemetery, and the girl drove home along the graded road to Laragh. In the moonlight at the homestead she parked the jeep in the yard, and went down the verandah to her room. She went to bed troubled and upset, conscious that she had done the right thing, distressed for the pain that she had caused, uneasy that she might
conceivably have made a great mistake. It was some time before she slept.

At Lucinda, David hardly slept at all. Towards dawn he fell into a restless slumber, but he was roused at seven by his aboriginal housekeeper, who said that Jackie was waiting to see him. Jackie was his half-caste overseer, who brought him a report of fifteen sheep dead around the No. 2 bore with fifteen hundred others looking on and not looking too good. One of the water tanks had sprung a leak and had wasted five hundred gallons in the night; most of the horses had escaped out of the horse paddock; Sammy, one of his black stockmen, wanted to go walkabout and proposed to leave that morning for an indefinite period, and his jeep had a flat tyre. He put on his clothes, went to breakfast, and discovered that the lamp of the old refrigerator had blown out and all the food in it was bad. He set about his daily work, jaded and depressed.

That afternoon he had a visitor, Mr. Duncan Mann, the journalist from Perth. The photographer had returned to the head office, but Mr. Mann had been instructed to stay on with the oil men to cover the erection of the oil rig, writing feature articles. He had stayed on till he had written himself dry. He had covered every aspect of the oil men’s camp and work, and still no order had come through for him to return to his home in Perth. Finally, when the fifth birthday of his eldest child was drawing very near and it seemed imperative to him to get home without further delay, he had turned in a story about the pet kitten at the oil rig, an Australian kitten that was developing a taste for American hot cakes and syrup. That did it, and he received a telegram from his editor ordering him back to Perth. He drove over to Lucinda Station to say good-bye to David Cope before starting off in his Land Rover on the journey home at dawn next day.

A little ashamed of his kitten story, it had occurred to him that David Cope might make a feature article—
British Boy Managers in the Far North
, perhaps. Over a cup of tea he set himself to draw David out, and David was so miserable, and the journalist worked with such skill, that David never realised that he was being interviewed at all. He told Mr. Mann all about his upbringing upon the farm, about the requisition of their land, about their emigration and the farm at Armadale. Mr. Mann, warming to the story, quietly
resolved to go and see the family at Armadale, and set to work to draw David out about his father. The fact that he had served at Gallipoli in 1915 made a close and obvious tie with the Australian forces, greatly strengthening the story from Mr. Mann’s point of view, and he asked one or two questions designed to find out if David’s father had had any previous contact with Australia before his emigration.

“I don’t think so,” David said. “He was in the Black and Tans for a time after the war.”

“What’s that?” asked Mr. Mann.

“In Ireland,” David said. “It was sort of being in the police, the Royal Irish Constabulary. Only they were armed like soldiers—tanks and everything. It was a full-scale war against Sinn Fein, the Irish rebels, for a couple of years. Worse than a war, I think. Very bitter.”

“What happened in the end?” asked the journalist.

“Oh, the Irish won. They got their independence. My Dad went home and took a farm near Newbury. He often used to talk about the war in Ireland.”

“Did he consider coming to Australia then?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mr. Mann stayed for half an hour, bade David good-bye, wished him luck and a good rain, and went back to the oil rig for the night. He left at dawn next day and breakfasted at Laragh Station with the Regans, or rather with Pat and Tom Regan and the Judge, for Mollie and her mother had their breakfast with the children in the kitchen. Light conversation was not normally a feature of the breakfast table at Laragh and Mr. Mann, who had been awake for two or three hours, found the atmosphere depressing. Thinking to raise interest and stimulate some small exchange of words, he said, “I looked in at Lucinda yesterday afternoon and had a chat with Mr. Cope. He was telling me about
his
father’s time in Ireland.”

Tom Regan spoke for the first time that morning. “And when would that one’s father have seen Ireland?”

“After the First War,” said Mr. Mann brightly. “He was in some sort of an armed police force, fighting the rebels.”

If his intention had been to raise interest he had certainly achieved it. There was a pregnant pause, and then Tom Regan asked, “And what rebels would they have been?”

Mr. Mann became aware suddenly that he might be
skating on thin ice. “I suppose he meant the Irish when they were fighting for independence,” he said.

Pat Regan laid down his knife and fork. “Ye say that this was after the First War?”

“That’s right.”

“And that one’s father was in Ireland fighting for the English, the curse of Cromwell on them?”

“That’s right.”

Tom Regan asked, “Was it the murdering Black and Tans that that one fought in for the English?”

Mr. Mann wished very much that he had not raised this subject, but there was nothing to be done about it now. “That’s right,” he said. “Something to do with the Royal Irish Constabulary, I think. After that he took a farm in England.”

“In the Name of God!” said Pat Regan. “Do ye sit there to tell us that one’s Dad was raising up the hand of murder against poor boys fighting to drive out the English from their country, and they with nothing but a rifle or maybe a hand grenade itself to throw against machine guns in an armoured car?”

“He didn’t tell me what his father was doing in Ireland,” said the journalist uncomfortably. “I’ve probably got it all wrong.”

“But ye say that that one’s father was in Ireland in the Black and Tans?” demanded Tom Regan.

“I think that’s what he said. But it’s a long time ago, and he may have got it wrong himself.”

The Judge spoke for the first time. “It is a very long time ago,” he said. “There is a Statute of Limitations, gentlemen, a law which states that no legal action may be initiated after a lapse of seven years. I would add to that, perhaps, and say that nothing really matters after twenty years.” The quiet, even voice went on: “I have proved that from my own experience—nothing really matters after twenty years. And these events that you are speaking of were thirty years ago, or more.”

Pat and Tom Regan sat staring at the Judge. The thought passed suddenly across the mind of the journalist that this drunken and disgraced old reprobate was no negligible man. Pat Regan said, “There’s none the like of that one for black treachery, taking the hand of kindness, and the young girl
off with him to the pictures in his jeep in the dark night, and he the son of a black-hearted Black and Tan.”

The Judge said evenly, “He is an honest and a clean lad, fit for any girl to go with. Would you like to be judged now, Mr. Regan, for things your father did in politics ten years before you were born?”

There was a long silence. Then Tom Regan got up from the table and walked out without a word. Pat Regan said heavily, “Sure, it will have me destroyed entirely,” and got up and went out after him.

Mr. Mann sat in silence with the Judge for a minute. Then he said, “I’m very sorry that I raised that subject, sir.”

“It will pass,” the Judge said. “They live much in the past, very much in the past. But they will grow accustomed to the new idea, and they are both good-hearted men. You have no occasion to distress yourself. It will all pass.”

Mr. Mann got into his Land Rover and went upon his way. It would have made a first-class feature article, but he rejected the idea.

At the end of February the oil men commenced to drill. No ceremony marked the start of the hole; as soon as their somewhat complicated equipment was installed, as they had installed it so often before, the big three-wheel drilling bit was attached to the drill collar and with no more ado the drill began to turn, the drilling mud to circulate, the spoil brought up from the hole to flow on to the screens, and Stanton Laird to inspect and examine all the particles that came up to the surface. They worked a daylight shift for the first week until the rig had settled down and all the bugs had been ironed out; then, warming to the work, they began to work the rig in shifts all through the day and night, sinking at the rate of about five feet an hour.

At the end of March, Stanton Laird got news from home which was a great blow to him. It was contained in a letter from his mother, and it read,