Beyond the Black Stump (9 page)

David Cope asked, “Do you know how big Laragh Station is, Stan?”

The geologist shook his head. “I’d only be guessing.”

“It’s just under a million acres—fifteen hundred square miles. That’s five times the size of your bit, and that’s just one property. How many horses does Pat use, Mollie?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I think we’ve got about three hundred, but I’m really not sure.”

Stanton said, “My face is sure red. I’d better quit talking about our ranches while I’m in Australia. Is Laragh Station really that big?”

“We’ve got a million acres,” Mollie said. “It’s not big as properties go, up in the north. We feel it’s just a comfortable size.”

He turned to her, smiling. “You know what? I’m going to keep my mouth shut about America till I learn something about this country.”

“Don’t do that,” she said. “We’ve all been looking forward to hearing how you live and everything. We very seldom get a visitor at Laragh, and I don’t ever remember anybody coming from abroad. Except David,” she added.

The Rogersons were used to an influx of visitors for their movie show and enjoyed having them, but that night they had to have tea in relays; with the surveyors they had over thirty people to feed in the dining-room. After the meal Clem Rogerson set up his projector and amplifiers while the visitors arranged chairs on the lawn in rows. The
hostess with her guests sat in the front, four or five white stockmen behind, a miscellaneous assortment of half-castes and aboriginals behind them again, and the show commenced.

The main feature was one that Stanton had seen first in New York four years previously, again in Hazel with his family before leaving for Arabia, and again at Abu Quaiyah. Seen for the fourth time, it failed to hold his attention; he had leisure to study the audience and to reflect on his surroundings. Before leaving Hazel he had considered that this assignment would be just such another one as Abu Quaiyah had been, a hot desert where they had lived in social isolation amongst an Arab population. He was already realising that here it was not going to be like that at all. Distances were enormous in Australia but in spite of them there seemed to be definite social life. There was no poverty as there had been amongst the Arabs, indeed there was some evidence of a good deal of money; Clem Rogerson’s Jaguar was exactly the same motor car as rolled down Wilshire Boulevard in Hollywood with a millionaire film actor at the wheel. The women were well got up and attractive in their summer dresses, particularly Mollie Regan sitting by his side, deeply absorbed in the vicissitudes of Marilyn Monroe. He sat among the moonlit audience before the screen, a little sleepy, feeling that he was entering on to a strange, unknown stage where all eyes were upon him, as indeed they were.

The movies came to an end about ten o’clock, and the Rogersons dispensed more drinks, with tea for the women. Stanton avoided alcohol this time by electing for tea. He seldom drank tea, and when he did he was accustomed to being presented with a cup of hot water and tea in a hygienic little bag; here tea was served barbarously from an enormous enamelled teapot, very black and strong. He didn’t really like it as a drink but the alternative seemed to be alcohol, which was worse because it was habit-forming. He stood telling Mrs. Rogerson how much he had enjoyed the movie and what a good actress Miss Monroe was, and while his attention was engaged on these politenesses somebody refilled his cup, to his dismay.

Mollie Regan came up to him. “I’m going off now with David,” she said. “We’ve got rather a long way to go.
You’ll be coming along to Laragh in the morning, I suppose?”

“I guess so,” he replied. “Mr. Bruce, he’s in charge. Does it make any difference being Sunday?”

She shook her head. “Father Ryan comes through about once a year, but he doesn’t approve of us really, of course.” He didn’t understand that, and it didn’t seem quite the moment to pursue the matter. “The Judge holds a Mass in the dining-room after breakfast—lasts about half an hour. After that it’s just like any other day, except that nobody does any work.”

“I’d say we’d be along in the morning, then,” he said.

“That’s fine. I’ve just got to go and find Mrs. Rogerson to say good-bye, and then I’ll be going off. See you tomorrow.”

She smiled, and he smiled back at her. “’Bye now,” he said. The girl went off to find her hostess to say good-bye.

David Cope came up to him. The geologist strolled out towards the jeep with the young grazier, glad to abandon his cup of tea. “Mr. and Mrs. Rogerson are very kind people,” he said. “Donald Bruce tells me that they have a movie show like this each week.”

“That’s right. It’s rather a good thing.”

Stanton looked round him in the quiet, moonlit night. In the stockmen’s quarters over on the right a few lights showed; from the foreman’s house came the faint wail of a baby roused for a feed. Over to the left was a long shed for vehicles; half a mile out in the bush he could see the iron roofs of the shearing camp, his quarters for the night. Behind them was a cheerful noise of talk and laughter as men and women got into the parked cars and jeeps, and said good-bye to the Rogersons. “It’s quite a place,” the geologist said at last. “Are all these properties like this?”

The Englishman said, “This is a particularly good one. They vary, you know. Mine isn’t this sort of a place at all.”

“What’s Laragh like?”

“That’s different again.”

“Smaller than this?”

“No,” said David. “It’s a good bit bigger, and it’s got more water. It’s a better property all round than this. But—well, the Rogersons are different to the Regans. You’ll see when you get there. Rogerson runs this place with white stockmen. I believe he’s got five of them here now. Laragh
runs on aboriginals and half-castes. That’s one difference, for a start.”

“They’re Catholics at Laragh, aren’t they? Something Miss Regan said just now seemed to mean that.”

David Cope laughed, unreasonably, it seemed to Stanton. “Well, yes, I suppose they might be. The two Regan brothers, the old boys, they’re Irish, of course. The mother’s a Scot. Did Don Bruce tell you anything about them?”

“No.”

“Oh …” The Englishman considered for a moment. “They’re southern Irish,” he said at last. “They were in the I.R.A.”

“What’s that?”

“The Irish Republican Army. I suppose you wouldn’t know about that. They rebelled against the British Government in 1916, and went on fighting them for years. It’s no secret—Pat Regan ’ll tell you all about it any time he gets a skinful. How he sniped the dastardly British from Jacob’s biscuit factory in Dublin and carved notches on the stock of his Mauser for each one he killed. They’ve got the pistol in the homestead still—they’ll probably show it you. Then, later, they were out against the Black and Tans—they were a sort of an armed police force that we had in Ireland, rather a tough army of Commando types. There was a price on both their heads at one time—five hundred pounds on Pat and a thousand on Tom, dead or alive.” He paused. “Pat’s never forgiven Tom for that, being worth more than him.”

The geologist blinked. Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for this. “Is that still current?” he asked anxiously.

“The rewards? I shouldn’t think so. There was a pardon, or something. They got away from Ireland before the British put them up against a wall, and came out here as stockmen. Then new land was opened up for settlement and they put in for it in the ballot, and got it. After that they never looked back. They’re worth a lot of money now.”

Stanton was a little dazed. “Would one of them be the father of Miss Regan, then?”

“Mollie’s Pat’s daughter. It’s a complicated family, as you’ll find out. But clever. They’re as clever as a wagonload of monkeys—all the children are.” He dropped his voice. “Here she comes. The cream of the joke is, my Dad was in
the Black and Tans.” He laughed uproariously. “Pat doesn’t know that yet.”

Stanton laughed dutifully with him. Mollie, coming to the jeep, asked, “What’s the joke?”

“Stan was telling me a rude story,” David said. “Very American, and very rude. I wouldn’t like to repeat it to you, Mollie.”

Stanton was staggered. “Hey, Miss Regan, that’s not———” he began, but the noise of the starter drowned his words, and when the engine caught David revved it up. The jeep slid off upon the moonlit track, and Stanton was left wondering whether he had been the victim of an English joke. If so, he thought, it was a joke in very poor taste.

W
HEN
Donald Bruce drove up to Laragh Station next morning with his party of Americans Mrs. Regan was there to welcome them, with Mollie and the two youngest children, Shamus and Maggie, aged twelve and ten respectively. Tom and the Judge were lying on their beds somewhat unwell; the Judge had got up to celebrate the weekly Mass quite unconstitutionally before a miscellaneous congregation and had gone back to bed again, for Saturday night at Laragh was marked by a different social formula from that of Mannahill. At Laragh on Saturday night the men would get together in the store office after tea and commence the serious business of the week, which was drinking rum. The store office had an old-fashioned, elevated accountant’s desk with the high stool that went with it; this was the only furniture apart from the children’s desks and forms, too small for the men. They sat around on packing cases or on the floor, debating alcoholically the work of the station and the state of the surrounding district. The debate that Saturday had been a depressing one, being mainly concerned with the advent of the Americans and the chaos that it was expected to create upon the property. Even the news of a substantial rise in the price of wool had done nothing to dispel the gloom, for the economics of the station had long ceased to be critical. That fact did nothing to alleviate the impression that ruin stared them in the face through the advent of the American oil men and, as a minor side issue, that Stanton Laird and his seismic crew intended to seduce every woman on the place, white and black.

“I’m thinking the Lord God has sent them to us as a visitation,” Pat said. “A visitation on account of all our mortal sins that Father Ryan keeps on telling us about, the way He’ll have us destroyed entirely.”

“It’s all part of it,” said Tom Regan gloomily. They stumbled to their beds at half-past one in the morning, in black despair.

An excess of alcohol never kept Pat Regan in his bed; his
massive frame carried the rum well. Disappointed in the ways of God to man, he turned for solace to the animal kingdom. He loved all animals, and he was very good with them. There was generally a little kangaroo hopping about Laragh homestead, a joey brought in by one of his stockmen. On Laragh Station kangaroos were a pest, eating the feed that should have been reserved for the sheep, multiplying in their hundreds. The Regans were good managers and could not tolerate the kangaroos; from time to time the Judge wrote a letter asking for a permit to shoot the protected animals and once a year would get a permit to shoot a hundred; with that authorisation shooting went on merrily all the year round, so that it was not uncommon for them to shoot as many as a thousand of the vermin in a year. Inevitably from time to time a joey would be found by a shot dam, and if there was not at that time a little kangaroo about the place it would be reared at Laragh Station as a pet; in later life it would go off into the bush, probably to be shot a month later in the normal course of keeping the beasts down.

The hopping mouse was the latest triumph of the man who could tame anything. He had found it as a youngster only about two inches long out in the bush at the foot of the windmill that pumped one of his bores, and had brought it back to the homestead in the toolbox of a truck, the tools thrown out and the box lined with gum tree leaves.

Pat Regan read no books or newspapers, nor did the radio appeal to him. His simple interests lay in taming animals and drinking rum. For weeks he had fed the mouse small dead beetles, cheese, and young shoots of the eucalypt, had played with it and made a fuss of it. It had ridden on his shoulder throughout much of each day, in the truck or jeep or, more aristocratically, in the Humber Super-Snipe bought new the previous year and used on Laragh Station principally as a nest box for the hens, who laid in it whenever a window was left open. That morning he had retired on to the back verandah of the store with the mouse, for he was developing a wonder with which to surprise and amuse his wife. He was training the mouse to come to him and hop up on his shoulder whenever he called “Hop!”, and he was achieving some success.

As the trucks approached Laragh, Donald Bruce, driving
with Stan Laird, said, “All these properties are a bit different, you know. You mustn’t expect this one to be like Mannahill.”

Stan smiled. “I know it. Mr. Cope was telling me last night. He said these people are Irish.”

“That’s right. You may think them a queer lot, to start with. Take them the right way, and you’ll find they can’t do enough for you. Get their backs up, and they could be very troublesome.”

“I wouldn’t expect that we’d create any trouble for them,” the geologist said. “We’ll be operating quite a ways out from the ranch house.”

“That’s true.” They drove on in silence for a minute. “You won’t mind if I explain to them that you don’t drink?”

“I’d appreciate it if you would. I see it’s kind of awkward here, but I just don’t like the stuff.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mr. Bruce without much confidence. “I’ll fix that up for you. They’re very hospitable, you know, and that’s about the only hospitality they understand. They’re really very nice people when you get to know them. They’re immensely kind.”

“Kind?”

The other nodded. “The kindest people this side of the black stump.”

“The black stump?”

“It’s what they say round here. It just means—anywhere.”

They drove up to the homestead about midday. The single-storey building stood drenched in blazing sunshine under a cloudless sky; its white-painted iron roof hurt the eyes. The men got out of the trucks and Mrs. Regan came out to meet them, with Mollie and the children. The girl said, “Ma, this is Stan Laird, from America.”