Lantana Lane (3 page)

If he specialised in anything, it was sunrises. He was unable to milk as early as his neighbours did, because sunrises cannot be taken in at a glance, or even in a series of glances; they emerge from darkness, and are not over until full daylight, and Herbie had to sit them out on his east verandah from beginning to end. Throughout the day clouds occupied a good deal of his time, and since staring upward causes a crick in the neck, he pursued this particular study lying flat on his back. Some people—Aub Dawson was one—took a long while to get over the idea that there must be some purpose in Herbie's odd behaviour. “What's he do it
for
?” Aub would demand. “What's he trying to get
out
of it?” But when such people asked Herbie what he got out of it, he only baffled them further with the simple word: “Dunno.” This is his favourite word. It saves him endless trouble and discussion. Aub, who really could not bear to think of all that good, concentrated gazing going to waste, developed the theory that if a man spent most of the day staring at the sky, he must at least become a good weather-prophet. So he used to ask hopefully : “Change coming, Herbie? . . .” “Rain blowing up? . . .” “Might get a thunderstorm, eh? . . .” But Herbie always answered, with his slow, amiable smile: “Dunno.” And at last Aub fell back upon cynicism, and remarked that this, after all, proved him as good a weather-prophet as most. Similarly, when Herbie had been keeping his eyes fixed unwinkingly on a pineapple plant for a couple of hours, he had nothing to say about it afterwards. He just liked to stare, and his pleasure in staring was incommunicable.

He was on excellent terms with everyone, but he had only one real friend, and this was Tommy Hawkins, who was five years old. Tommy had a brother, Dave, a couple of years older than himself, and another, Keithie, who was three, so his mother sometimes thought it strange that he should so often abandon his games with them, and run off across the paddock to spend a few hours with Herbie. The truth was that he had recently acquired a farm of his own, and he found Herbie particularly acceptable as a companion simply because he appeared to be the only person who fully understood that the reality of imaginary things is not the same as the reality of real things. Even Dave and Keithie were a little shaky on this point. Dave was apt to do his pretending in a slightly shamefaced manner which quite spoiled Tommy's concentration, while Keithie became utterly confused, and reduced the whole art of make-believe to an absurdity. As for grown-ups, they were hopeless; all but Herbie.

Tommy knew perfectly well that his farm was not
real
real, and he sometimes became weary of the fiction—kindly upheld by all the neighbours—that it was. However, Amy Hawkins has taken great pains to teach her children manners, so when some well-meaning adult paused to pat him on the head, and enquire how things were going on his place, he always replied that they were going good, thank you. He knew the language of farmers, and had lately added to it the word “damn,” which rather disturbed his mother, “. . . though really,” she would sigh, “the way he says it, so sort of natural, it doesn't sound like a swearword at all.”

“Put any beans in down at your place, Tommy?” some great goat would ask, and Tommy would reply, humouring him:

“I put 'em in long ago.”

“They doing all right?”

“They was getting the damn bean-fly, but I sprayed 'em.”

“Tanks getting low, I suppose?”

“No, they're full up. . . or they might be just two rungs down.”

“Half your luck! Mine are pretty near empty.”

“Mine were too, but the damn rain last night filled 'em up again.”

“Go on! We didn't get any rain here.”

“Down on
my
place,” Tommy would reply firmly, “there was twelve . . . no, twenty inches, and me damn tanks are full, and me damn dam's full too.”

And he would smile a little sideways smile, indulging this great goat who knew nothing at all about imaginary reality. Did he not betray it by his questions? For what would be the use of such a farm as Tommy's if things went wrong on it? It would be no better than a
real
real one. He had taken suitable steps to guard against this. He had an assistant known as Me Man on to whose shoulders he could push such jobs as he did not care to be bothered with himself; those which he did attend to were never waiting to be done, but always already accomplished, with complete success; and he made good use of “to-morrow.” He had also taken the precaution of supplying himself with a road of such surpassing badness that no wheeled vehicle save his own could negotiate it, thus checkmating the embarrassing suggestions of his acquaintances that they might come along and have a look at this place of his one day. Herbie, of course, was never guilty of such a solecism.

A farm of this kind was no trouble at all. Tommy could possess and enjoy it without feeling—as he knew all the other farmers, except Herbie, did—that the cultivation of the soil was a tyranny from which there was no respite. He needed, like Herbie, a tremendous amount of leisure for enjoyment—every waking moment, in fact—and he refused to tarnish the pleasures of farm ownership with anxious cares. So when he wandered over to Herbie's place, he felt at home. Herbie's farm was, of course, a
real
real one, but that did not seem to worry Herbie much. And when they spoke of Tommy's, it was clear that Herbie not only understood the advantages of imaginary reality, but wished his own farm might share them.

“You not putting in any more suckers, Herbie?”

“I reckon I got enough in now. How much've you put in?”

“Two acres. No, three.” Tommy pondered, and felt that it was perhaps a pity he had not made it five while he was about it. “But I put in another acre of bananas, too,” he added expansively, “and a hundred damn paw-paws.”

“You got a man to help you, though,” Herbie pointed out.

Tommy smiled his wise and secret smile. Herbie's farm was better than most real real ones, but it would clearly be better still if it were like his own.

“You picking to-day, Herbie?”

“No, I been around, but there ain't enough to make up a case.”

“Me man's picking down at my place—he'll get fifty, I reckon.”

“Got your cases made?”

“I got enough for to-day. I'll be making more to-morrow.”

“Ah,” said Herbie with a perfectly genuine sigh, “that's the best day for making cases—to-morrow.”

Tommy's father—who well knew that a prosperous farm must be mechanised—had given him a tractor for Christmas, and when Herbie needed any hauling done Tommy pedalled it down to the fence, and Herbie lifted it over, and Tommy did the job for him. Herbie (who was mechanised only to the extent of a home-made wheelbarrow) found this a great convenience, for Tommy's tractor was well known to be of almost unlimited horse-power, and had recently dragged a log weighing one hundred tons up the hill from Late Tucker Creek in less than five minutes. All its machinery was clearly painted on its side, and a trifling adjustment with a spanner—or a stick, if no spanner were handy—converted it instantly to a bulldozer. One morning when it had been so converted Tommy announced vaingloriously:

“I could shift that damn lantanna of yours in one day, Herbie, I bet.”

“Reckon we better let it be, Tommy. I got all the land I can manage.”

“Well, there's that damn patch of groundsel—I could shift that.”

“No hurry—it ain't going to seed yet awhile.”

But Tommy was being properly brought up by a good farmer, and he said severely : “Me dad says it don't do to let groundsel get a hold.”

True. Herbie eyed it uneasily. It did not occur to him (and this, no doubt, was why Tommy so valued his company), to say with amused and indulgent heartiness that Tommy had better go and get it out, then; for he had committed himself to the reality of imagination, and though the imaginary situation must be treated as real, he must not insult Tommy by seeming to suggest that Tommy actually believed it to be so. He must not subject Tommy to the embarrassment of finding himself and his tractor pitted, in very truth, against a forest of groundsel. Tommy trusted him to stall; and he stalled.

“Maybe I'll get on to grubbin' it out,” he conceded, and added hastily: “To-morrow.”

But Tommy would not allow this. He knew all about to-morrow. Herbie must not suppose that because he kept the demands of his farm within reasonable bounds, he could ignore its real reality, and play about with to-morrows in this shameless manner. “There's too much to grub out,” he objected. “It'd take you months and years. You want a damn bulldozer.”

“Well,” countered Herbie, “I might buy a bulldozer one day.”

“When?” demanded Tommy ruthlessly; and Herbie, hard-pressed, replied : “When I win the Casket.”

Herbie was very busy all the next morning. First there was a finer sunrise than usual, prolonged by a bank of low-lying cloud which filled the air like a luminous red dust. Then, when he had just finished his milking, and was going down to his pines to do some chipping, he almost trod on a very newly-shed snake skin, so he had to squat on his heels and study that for a long time. After he had been chipping for an hour or so, he noticed that someone had begun burning off on the far hillside across Late Tucker Creek, and the spectacle of blue smoke melting into the blue sky was one which could not be passed over in a hurry. So what with one thing and another, he was only just returning to the house when he saw the Kennedys' Land Rover stop at the Hawkins' with their meat and mail. He didn't eat meat himself, or read newspapers, and no one ever wrote to him except to send bills, so he was neither surprised nor disappointed when the Rover went past his own gate without stopping. He lit the fire for his billy, cut himself a hunk of bread and a hunk of cheese, made his tea, and sat on the steps very contentedly, eating and drinking and gazing with great interest at a dead lizard. He had just peeled a bird-pecked pineapple, and was holding it by its green top, and eating steadily round and round it, when Tommy arrived, and demanded at once:

“You going in to buy your bulldozer 's'afternoon, Herbie?”

Herbie shook his head.

“Got to save up a bit more yet.”

“Why?” enquired Tommy. “You got tons of money now you won the Casket.”

“Eh? I never won no Casket.”

“Me mummy says you did. I heard her telling Mrs. Bell over the 'phone. She said it was in the damn paper.”

Herbie sat with the pineapple half-way to his mouth, staring at Tommy, but for once he saw nothing at all. He didn't believe it, but he was vaguely frightened. It seemed to come over him all of a sudden that such a thing
could
happen, and he felt that he had been terribly and stupidly careless.

“Go on,” he said slowly, “you must've got it wrong.”

“I never! “cried Tommy with indignation.

“She must've meant something else,” Herbie insisted doggedly.

“She never! “Tommy was getting annoyed. “You come and ask her, then,” he challenged. “Come on! “

“I haven't finished me dinner,” Herbie protested weakly, and took a small bite of the pineapple to prove it. He had an overwhelming instinct to sit still and keep very quiet.

“You can eat a damn pine while you're walking, can't you?” demanded Tommy, hopping with impatience. “Come on—don't you want to know if you can get your damn bulldozer?”

Herbie did not. He felt like an insect being prodded with a stick. He only wanted to be left alone.

“You go,” he suggested. “I got a bit of a pain in me leg. You go.”

Tommy went, streaking across the paddock to the boundary fence, ducking under the wire, and racing up towards his own house, yelling :“Mum! Mum! “

Herbie sat there on the step feeling very confused. For many years the sum of six thousand pounds had been associated in his mind with Gracious Living, and Gracious Living had been associated in his mind with his wife; therefore, when his wife died, Gracious Living had died with her, and it had seemed that there could be no further connection possible between himself and six thousand pounds. He was now tormented by a suspicion that this might have been faulty reasoning—but it was still powerful enough to comfort him a little. Herbie Bassett simply
DID NOT
acquire vast sums of money. More comforting still, however, was the sudden realisation that it would be damn silly if he did; for his contemplation of natural phenomena had imbued him with one conviction, namely that strange things often happened, but not damn silly ones, and, since he never read the newspapers, he erroneously supposed this rule to apply, also, to the arrangements of mankind. Most comforting of all was the thought that if it had been true Amy would have been over herself to tell him—and Jack too, and all the family, and most likely the neighbours would have got wind of it. . . .

So he began to feel a good deal better. There was no need to worry, he told himself, and forthwith ceased to do so, because right above his head he noticed a long path of rippling white cloud trailing across the otherwise empty sky like the wake of a ship on a blue ocean. He had his lunch things to put in order—there was the billy to be emptied, and the pannikin to be stood upside down, and the knife to be cleaned—but he knew how slyly clouds could sneak off or melt away while you weren't watching, so he left his chores undone, and was just about to settle down on his back when Dick Arnold drove past, caught sight of him, waved a hand and shouted:

“Congratulations, Herbie!”

Herbie sat down suddenly on the steps because his legs began to wobble. It
was
true, then. . . . It was
true
. . . . There opened up before him like the pit of Hell an intolerable, dark, endless and indescribably menacing vista of things he would have to do, beginning with buying drinks for everybody, which he would have done very gladly if he could have done it without being present himself, for he was not a drinking man. And he would have to go to banks, which were places he disliked intensely because there was nothing to look at except bits of paper, and these, he had found, usually meant trouble of one kind or another. He would have to be talked at; make decisions; answer questions; fill in forms; be interviewed, perhaps and have his picture in the paper; buy a suit, even; buy all sorts of things. He might have to develop his farm . . . plant up the rest of his land . . . get some machinery, and a ute . . . learn to drive them. . . . He was rich, and rich people were never left alone. He would never have time to look at things again. . . .