Lantana Lane (21 page)

Facing the front again, and observing that Kelly was about to tackle a kind of rocky staircase, she had barely time to exclaim : “
Allons, mon ami, courage! En avant!”
before the road blew up.

We are happy to say that it blew up behind them. Kelly has passed unscathed over many nasty bits of highway by adhering to the simple rule that the best way to be sure of getting anywhere is to keep going as fast as possible; and on this occasion it had kept going just long, and just fast enough. Even now it would have kept on going if Ken had not been so startled that he stalled the engine just as it was successfully climbing up a step some fifteen inches high. Disgusted, it uttered a raucous snarl, and stopped short with a jolt that lifted its passengers high into the air. Ken and Aunt Isabelle, having come down again, sat still on a seat now leaning backward like a dentist's chair; Jake lay still on a manure bag, more than ever at a loss to understand the whimsicalities of existence; Kelly stood still, emitting deep breaths of steam from its boiling radiator. For one long, long second, before a rain of small stones, earth and assorted debris descended on them, there was an oddly peaceful silence.

Then, sharply ejaculating : “Suffering snakes!” Ken leapt out and tore back down the hill towards the corner. Obviously, thought Aunt Isabelle, he was going to chastise the bushranger, who, having failed to halt them by intimidation, had hurled a grenade at them, and richly deserved his punishment. Anxious not to miss this interesting spectacle, she clambered hastily out of her seat, and was preparing to follow when she perceived developments on the spot which needed her attention.

At some stage of the journey, the rusty wire securing the hinged flap at the rear end of the tray had burst asunder; the crate of fowls had slid bumpily backward during Kelly's essay at mountaineering; the jar of their halt had precipitated it on to the road; and the impact of its fall had broken two slats. Through the escape route thus provided, the hens were emerging in great disorder, and Jake was in the act of leaping joyously into their midst. It will be recalled that Aunt Isabelle was prepared to lean heavily upon inherited instinct for guidance in her rural life—and rightly so, for she now heard its voice urgently proclaiming that fowls were property, and property must at all times be sedulously guarded. So she seized one of the hens, thrust it back into the crate, and turned to seize another. Alas, they came out faster than she could put them in; to this day she repudiates Ken's assertion that there were only a dozen, and stoutly maintains that she counted twenty-two before they foiled her by adopting a a policy of dispersal. At last she saw with consternation that they were making for the scrub on the lower side of the road. (“. . . where, being now a little fatigued by my efforts, I feared I could not pursue them with any hope of success.”)

Jake, of course, was not at all fatigued, and entertained no doubt of his ability to capture the absconders, so she was relieved to see Ken reappear, carrying a bucket of water. This he hurriedly placed on the ground as she shrieked an appeal to him, and was just in time to grab Jake by the tail as he prepared to leap from the bank into a thicket of impenetrable lantana. As he dumped his captive back into the ute, and re-knotted the broken lead, Aunt Isabelle perceived that there was blood upon his hand. She enquired with interest:

“You have killed the Drongo?”

Ken blinked. His interview with Jeff had passed from exclamations, questions, reassurances and handsome apologies to cordial handshakes, back-slappings, expressions of mutual esteem, and fervent agreement that the sheila didn't live that two good blokes like themselves wouldn't be mugs to fight over. But he now reflected that since Fate had not only so admirably seconded his efforts to provide entertainment for his passenger, but had also prevented her from witnessing this scene of rapprochement, it would be a bit tough to spoil her fun with an anti-climax by revealing that the blood came from his own wrist, which had got in the way of an unguided missile, and that Jeff was enjoying (apart from a slight headache) his usual robust health.

So he replied that although bare-handed slaughter had indeed been his intention, he had spared the life of the poor coot on discovering him to be dingbats. Aunt Isabelle demanded: “
Qu'est ce que c'est
—dingbats?” Ken explained that he meant off his kadoover. She enquired: “
Qu'est ce que c'est
—kadoover?” He tried again with loopy as a snake, and she asked : “
Qu'est ce que c'est
—loopy?” So he gave up, and tapped his forehead with his finger, at which she, a trifle offended, declared that if he meant nuts, he should say nuts, for of the idiomatic English she possessed a command the most extensive.

She then went on to explain the disappearance of the fowls, and assured Ken that he need not fear for the safety of Kelly while he went in search of them, for if the Drongo should attempt another assault, she and Jake would resolutely defend it. But Ken was beginning to be hungry, and he did not want to be bothered chasing fowls which would, no doubt, find their way down to Jeff's place, where he could later collect them at leisure. So he pointed out that the scrub around here was that thick a dog couldn't bark in it, and he might hunt the perishing things for a week without getting a sight of them, so he reckoned the best move would be to kiss them good-bye, and make tracks for home. Aunt Isabelle was very scandalised by this, and began to deliver a homily on thriftlessness which Ken feared might go on indefinitely; so he said he hadn't wanted to alarm her, but the fact was that every one of those fowls would be by now quite beyond recovery, for the scrub teemed with pythons which enjoyed nothing better than a nice, fat pullet. This certainly stopped the homily, but inspired, instead, pleas that he would at once conduct her to see a python, and he was only able to check these by reminding her that the lunatic might return during their absence, and commit an act of sabotage upon Kelly.

So she regretfully took her seat again, and Ken—having filled the radiator, and left the bucket by the side of the road for Jeff to pick up—took his. Kelly coughed, shuddered, heaved and got under way again. Aunt Isabelle asked hopefully whether they were likely to encounter any more adventures, and Ken said he thought not, unless the posse should be lying in ambush for them at the top of The Goat Track; but when they reached this spot, and came again on to the highway, there was no one to be seen except a small group of Dillillibill citizens making their way home from Church. Kelly put on a nice turn of speed, but it was long after midday when they turned into Lantana Lane, and drew up at last outside the Griffiths' gate. Aunt Isabelle, with glad cries of: “
Suzanne! Henri! Mes enfants!
“soon made her presence known, and, as we have already related, became the centre of a scene so tumultuous and confusing that Dick and Marge could only look on in amazement, until stray words emerging from the hubbub revealed that this was a family reunion of some kind. They then made tactful movements of withdrawal which were quickly circumvented by Aunt Isabelle, who declared, embracing them both, that the friends of her niece were also her friends, and it was charming of them to be here to welcome her, and of course they would stay to luncheon which she herself would help Sue to prepare, for it must not be thought that she expected to lead a life of luxury and idleness in her new home,
au contraire,
she had come prepared to play her part as they could see from her boiler suit which, though perhaps lacking in
chic,
was most suitable for labour in the fields, and in her luggage she had also a peasant scarf which had descended to her from her great-great-great-grandmother whose husband had been a
vigneron,
but it would serve equally well, no doubt, among the pineapples.

At this moment her thunderstruck audience became aware of the ear-splitting racket which, as the Lane well knows, means that Kelly is starting up. Ken was giving them all a wave of his hand as he prepared to drive off, but Aunt Isabelle, with a scream, rushed at him, plucked him from his seat, and introduced him to his neighbours as her very dear friend, Moolliner, who had conveyed her safely to her destination through many perils, having not only intervened to save her from imprisonment, and outwitted the
gendarmes
sent in pursuit of them, but also courageously defended her during an encounter with a dingbats Drongo. She added, cackling wickedly, that had she been younger, he would himself have constituted a perilous adventure on a road so unfrequented, and it now gave her great pleasure to present him to her niece, who would naturally insist that he join them at luncheon. Poor Sue was by this time so dazed that when the graceless Ken solemnly offered her his hand, she actually said: “How do you do?” but came to her senses in time to slap it away instead of shaking it, and bid him scram before she hit him on the head with the mincer.

Aunt Isabelle now turned her attention to Tony and Jake, who were rolling about on the grass together, enjoying a mock battle, and proudly invited everyone to admire the valuable, frolicsome and intelligent dog which she had brought as a gift for her little cabbage. Everyone complied, and Marge—having rubbed her eyes and looked more closely, said in a weak voice that she loved Boxers, but she hadn't ever seen one with spots before . . . and weren't they an unusual colour? . . . Aunt Isabelle was just beginning to explain about the nail varnish when Jake got through Tony's guard, and seized a tempting bit of shirt-tail which had escaped from its retirement during the scuffle. There was one of those horrible, rending sounds which women hate to hear. Sue uttered a cry of dismay. Tony sat up, inspected the tatters which now most inadequately draped his person, and said consolingly, like the kind little boy that he is : “Pipe down, Mum; it's only an old one.”

But Jake, rudely recalled from the simple world of dogs and children to one which the bewildering commands and tabus of the larger humans always made so difficult, was alarmed to find himself surrounded by a ring of these creatures—all staring at him in an unsympathetic way which was dreadfully familiar. With his head on one side, his forehead painfully wrinkled, and a ragged fragment of khaki cloth depending from his jaws, he stood and returned their gaze, his expression eloquent of sad, anxious and puzzled enquiry. Tony—who had frequently been the target of similiar stares—understood at once just how he felt, and hastened to the defence, protesting : “Gee whiz, he's only a puppy, Mum!” And he added that phrase which was, alas, to be so often on his tongue thereafter : “He didn't understand. . . he never meant to do it! “

All the creatures immediately perceived how true this was. Sue's heart melted in her breast. She fell on her knees, gathered the culprit into her arms, and cried:

“Isn't he
sweet
?”

Little she knew.

I
T WOULD
be pleasant to believe that Science, when it grouped snakes under the name of Squamata, was indulging in a spot of imaginative whimsy, for the most conspicuous thing about these creatures is their manner of locomotion, and for this no more aptly descriptive term than squamatous could possibly be invented. But imaginative whimsy would, of course, be a very improper thing for Science to indulge in, so we must regretfully accept the fact that the word refers to their scales, and not to their movements.

All the same, it is the erroneous interpretation which will probably linger in our minds, for the attitude of most people to snakes is less scientific than emotional—an attitude which, we suggest, dates from the very earliest recorded association of man and reptile. We do not wish to harp unduly upon the Garden of Eden, but it naturally keeps on popping up, for the events which took place there set the pattern for much that goes on in the Lane, including the uneasy relationship between ourselves and representatives of the order Squamata.

It will be remembered that when sentence was passed upon Adam and Eve, the Serpent also did not escape uncursed. Indeed, grim as were the words which condemned our first parents to swink for ever among thorns and thistles, they seem almost mild when compared with those which so terrifyingly pronounced doom upon the Serpent.
UPON THY BELLY SHALT THOU GO, AND DUST SHALT THOU EAT
. Appalling! The mere sound of it is enough to chill the blood—and that, apparently, is exactly what it did. When there is added the further decree of perpetual enmity between men and snakes—the former neglecting no opportunity of bruising the latter's head, and the latter making a dead set at the former's heel—no mystery remains in the fact that the generally prevailing good-neighbour policy in the Lane here comes up against a formidable psychological obstacle.

It is true that the sons of Adam are inclined to be tolerant of carpet snakes, and when they see one basking in the sun, spread out along the tops of the pineapple plants, they will usually allow it to slide away with its head unbruised. But the daughters of Eve, on their own ground, are less forbearing. “I know it's harmless,” they will say, gazing with distaste at eight feet of richly patterned reptile squaming indolently across the verandah, “but I just don't
like
snakes, and I
will not
have them in the house, so you just get a stick while I watch it.”

What makes the gentle sex so savage is precisely this habit snakes have of entering houses. The women allow them to be a fair enough hazard out of doors, but resent finding them in the bath, or lying along the kitchen mantelpiece behind the tea and sugar. And who can blame them? It was surely not unreasonable of Myra to be riled when a copper snake fell out of Aub's shirt as she picked it up? And when Marge, having found a four-foot Black crawling into the top drawer of her dressing-table, seized a broom and violently pushed the drawer shut upon it, can we fairly censure her for gazing in sombre triumph at the corpse which Bruce presently extracted, and flung out the window? As she said indignantly : “I was just going to get a pair of socks, and I might have put my
hand
on it!”

Note the form of this protest. She does not complain that it might have bitten her; she merely has the horrors because she might have touched it. Had it been a carpet snake, Bruce would undoubtedly have made the asinine, and typically masculine reply that it wouldn't have hurt her if she had; but this point of view is totally irrelevant, for what women feel towards snakes is far less fear than aversion.

Consider, too, the illuminating lament of Heather Arnold when she perceived a sinuous shape stealing across her bedroom window-sill, which is at least ten feet from the ground. “I can never,” she cried passionately, “get used to the way they
climb
! “This is the very voice of evicted Eve. In the time of innocence before the Fall, she must often have watched, with admiration and pleasure, the Serpent elegantly weaving its way through the topmost branches of the Tree of Knowledge—but now her deepest instincts are outraged by the sight of a snake climbing anything. They clamour that the wretched thing should stay down on its belly in the dust, for thanks to its machinations she was landed with domesticity, and if she must work out her sentence, should it not do likewise? Insult, she feels, is added to injury when it assumes the perpendicular for the purpose of invading her own exclusive domain.

So snakes of any kind are for it once they cross the threshold or the window-sill, and the poisoners are for it anywhere, unless they can make a fast getaway. Not that they don't have a good run for their money indoors, where there are so many things for them to retreat behind, or beneath, and one cannot swipe at them so freely. The one that got under Amy's wardrobe stood seige for nearly an hour, defying the united efforts of the family to eject it. But Biddy effected what is unanimously allowed to be the neatest capture in the history of our community, and she did it all by herself, too, for Tim had gone to Rothwell, and she was alone in the house, except for the children. Admittedly, the snake played right into her hands by entering the fridge when she had it open for defrosting; but she slammed it shut like lightning, and turned on the current, so presently hibernation set in, and when Tim came home the creature was too drowsy to know what hit it. This execution—so clean and simple—was in marked contrast to the bloody massacre which took place under the Dawsons' bed. That invader was a really big Black, and when Aub and Myra came in and switched on the light, it decided to make itself inconspicuous by stretching out under the bed, close up against the skirting-board. This was not a bad idea at all, and would have been successful if it had not passed between the wall and one leg of the bed, leaving its tail protruding. The tail was not noticed however, though Myra must have almost trodden on it when she arranged her pillow; the discovery was made only because Aub stood on one foot while he removed his shoe from the other (a thing which Myra is always telling him he is no longer young enough, or slim enough to do), lost his balance, and bumped the foot of the bed, thus pushing its head hard against the wall. In such circumstances even the most stoical snake must have betrayed its presence by a convulsive movement.

For once there was no question of you-watch-it-while-I-get-a-stick. The thing was caught, and the only problem was how to hit it. If you have ever tried to hit a snake which is pressing itself closely into the angle of floor and wall underneath a low double bed, you will understand why Aub's efforts merely made him very hot, breathless and profane. At one stage he even advocated pulling the bed away, and letting the ruddy so-and-so escape, because at this rate it would be time to rise before they got to sleep. But Myra vehemently opposed this suggestion, and in the end they both crawled under the bed, and Myra pinned its head against the wall while Aub cut its throat with the bread-knife.

The harmless snakes are pretty safe out of doors, though. (Of course the word “harmless “is rather ambiguous, and the affair in the Griffiths' fowlyard shows that there are limits to the indulgence of the menfolk.) Packing-sheds are, by tradition, sanctuary for carpet snakes, and Biddy just has to put up with the one that lives in theirs. She tries to find consolation in Tim's assurance that it saves him pounds a year by eating the rats which would otherwise eat his wheat and laying-mash; but all the same, when she is packing pines she keeps a wary and hostile eye on the squamiferous coils looped round the rafter above her head.

Sue Griffith used to be the weak spot in the women's united front, for she is by temperament disposed to love all creatures—even snakes. This may have been all right, perhaps, for St. Francis of Assisi, but it is an extremely difficult stance for farmers to maintain. We are surrounded by so many creatures, nearly all of which seem to exist for the purpose of impeding or frustrating our efforts to make a living. We may manage, with a good deal of determination, to subdue our feeling of malevolence towards Brother Leech, for he merely sucks our blood, and we can spare a little of that without actual damage to our bank accounts. We can forgive the Brother Tick who confines his attentions to ourselves, but we are implacably hostile to the one who attacks our cattle. And it calls for a greater degree of Christian forbearance than even Sue can command, to love Brother Borer, Brother Fruit-fly, and a host of other brethren whose activities contribute so largely to our financially depressed condition. It is also discouraging to observe that while we strive conscientiously to love as many creatures as possible, they make no attempt to love each other. Sue frequently finds herself troubled and embarrassed by Brother Snake's penchant for devouring Brother Frog, and by the rapacious appetite of Brother Hawk for little Sister Chicken.

Nevertheless, she used to insist—before the episode in the fowlyard—that she quite liked snakes. There is reason to suspect that she has deliberately taken her eyes off some which Henry has bidden her watch while he fetched a weapon, thus conniving at their escape; and she always used to speak heatedly about the wickedness of slaying poor, inoffensive carpet snakes. She declared indignantly that no snake had any real wish to intrude, and, when it accidentally did so, was only too anxious to withdraw without causing any trouble. No one argued about this, but the other women said it was not the point; when she ganged up with the men about carpet snakes, and even sabotaged operations against more dangerous Squamata, they took the view that she was letting the side down.

But all that is changed now, and we shall tell you why.

One evening, when Tony and Aunt Isabelle, escorted by Jake, had gone to a birthday party at the Bells', Sue and Henry settled down for a nice, peaceful evening. Henry went to sleep in his chair with an open book on his knee, and Sue went to sleep in hers with some knitting on her lap, and the nine o'clock voice of the A.B.C. composedly reporting the sensations and disasters of the past twelve hours, fell upon two pairs of happily deaf ears. But although tidings of floods, tornadoes, revolutions, murders, juvenile delinquencies and exploding H-bombs failed to disturb their little nap, an ominous outburst of noise from their own backyard brought them both to their feet in a split second.

Seizing a torch, Henry dived out the kitchen door, with Sue close upon his heels. It happened to be one of those quite abnormal occasions when neither moon nor stars glorified our sky, and the night was inky black. From the henhouse came the kind of hysterical clamour which only panic-stricken poultry can emit. The ray of the torch, sweeping to and fro, came dramatically to rest upon a long, dark, shining, gliding shape. “Holy smoke!” exclaimed Henry. “What a whopper! “

At the same moment, the whopper (which was next morning found to be, by Bruce Kennedy's precise measurement, twelve feet two and a half inches long), realised that escape rather than banqueting must now be its aim, and, doubling swiftly back upon itself, sought egress from the fowlyard by the same hole in the wire netting which had allowed its entry. Perhaps it takes some time for the rear end of so long a snake to grasp what its front end is up to; at all events, there was a brief, but fatal hitch in its execution of this manœuvre, owing to the fact that it found the hole still plugged by about three feet of its own tail. This seemed to confuse it a little, and Henry, summing up the situation in a trice, called out to Sue: “Grab it while I get a stick!”

Much may happen in the human mind during a second or two of crisis; indeed, almost the only thing which does not seem to have occurred to Sue was the advisability of retorting : “
You
grab it while
I
get a stick.” Instead, she apparently condensed into one tick of the clock enough anguished spiritual indecision to have kept Hamlet going for a year. To grab, or not to grab? That was the question. On the one hand were her Franciscan principles—for not only was this a poor, inoffensive carpet snake, but it was doing everything in its power to demonstrate the truth of her contention that Squamata in general only want to get away. To grab, therefore, would be shocking. On the other hand, she was, as custodian of the chooks, aware that her egg-money would be gravely jeopardised if poor, inoffensive carpet snakes were to consume her hens whenever they felt so disposed. Not to grab, therefore, would be silly.

And yet—quite apart from Franciscan benevolence—she hesitated. For although she is always handling such things as frogs, mice, spiders, crickets, worms and lizards, the only snakes she had so far handled had been dead ones, and she was now astonished to discover in herself a strong, emotional disinclination to obey Henry's command.

Meanwhile, Brother Snake had got his problem worked out, and his head was posted beside his tail, superintending its withdrawal from the hole; a bare two feet now remained outside the wire. Henry, rummaging about on the wood-heap for a suitable weapon, was holding the torch in such a manner that its light played only dimly and fitfully over these proceedings, and the smoothly flowing movement, half-seen, of dark and shining coils filled Sue with a sudden abhorrence which brought her vaccillations to an end. She perceived that if she did not stop the tail from going in, the head would speedily come out, and for more reasons than one, this was clearly undesirable. So she took a deep breath, jumped forward, and grabbed. It was comforting to know that Henry was just behind her, and, presumably, now armed.