Remembering Babylon (9 page)

George was surprised how keen his return to society had made him. He felt the resurgence of his old vigour, and his soul leapt forward to a time when he and Leona, Miss Gonzales (he preferred to think of her, for the moment, in this more formal way, it set them further apart from the others) would be frank with one another, and tenderly, touchingly close. A conversation in this mode began in his head, and under the influence of the pleasure it provided, his whole being soared, as if the book in his pocket, which he had forgotten, had been transformed along with the rest of him, and was fluttering over the table in the form of a putto with rainbow-coloured wings enclosing a face of quite cherubic innocence, and no discommodious body at all.

Leona, meanwhile, had taken charge of the occasion; in a rather schoolmistressly way, George thought with some amusement. Was she mocking him? If so, he did not resent it. Quite the contrary. He was surprised what a pleasure it was to give in to her authority and be relieved of his own; to be playfully bossed; even if it set him at the same level as Hector Gosper. He had, suddenly, a tender fellow feeling for the harelipped youth that dissolved all rivalry between them in a common response to the rather bantering tone in which Miss Leona softly bound and ruled them. It was a reflection, this, of their shared youthfulness. Hector too bucked up and lost a little of his edgy watchfulness.

The two little girls were astonished by the turn things had taken. They were used to these afternoons when Hector or one of the other boys turned up – it was usually Hector – and the teasing way Leona treated them, but had not expected her to treat Mr Abbot so. Even less that he should accept it, though Janet saw after a little that this was another version of the fortune-telling, only this time the game was between Leona and Mr Abbot.

She saw something else as well. That in playing his part Mr Abbot had no more to do than Hector had. They only
thought they were playing, because Leona managed things so cleverly, putting words into their mouth that they had never in fact spoken, and taking both parts herself. Janet was surprised how clear this was to her. The world recently, she thought, kept reaching out to show her things, to catch her attention and enlighten her.

‘That’s better children,’ Mrs Hutchence said, ‘that’s what I like to see.’ She herself had said nothing. She sat listening, but everything, you felt, was contained by her listening, and without it would have been different.

After a time, Mrs Hutchence and Janet went off to attend to the bees. George, Leona and Hector were left alone – but not quite alone. The smaller of the McIvor girls stayed behind, not quite discouraged, George thought, by Leona. She watched them thoughtfully from the end of the table, and when they went out to the back verandah to see Mrs Hutchence and Janet moving about in sunbonnets and veils in a grove below the house, she sat on a woodblock with her elbows on her knees and her chin supported on her fists, missing nothing that passed between them. George wondered if it was just childish curiosity or a kind of jealous love that made her so narrowly watchful, but whether it was for Leona or Hector he could not tell.

Their talk was desultory now. Leona might have been bored with them. There were silences in which George felt at a loss, as if it was up to him now to justify the place she had offered him with some demonstration of gallantry or wit, but the conversation he had begun in his head, which was so full of frankness and intimacy, belonged to the future; he could not catch its tone in the present and he embarrassed himself by asking, out of terror at the gap that had opened, which was too full of the afternoon light and the little McIvor girl’s eyes, a question, a direct one, which was in itself of no importance but was put in a manner too blunt, almost brutal – he saw that as soon as the words were out. Miss Leona looked grieved, as if she might, after all, have been mistaken in him. What dismayed him was that he should have
made
such an error, when he was otherwise in a state of such heightened sensitivity.

It did not escape him, even in the midst of his confusion, that a little self-satisfied smile had come to the corner of Hector’s mouth, which he was trying to hide by looking very fixedly at his own immaculate boots, while, with his hands in his pockets, he shifted his weight back and forth so that the silence was filled with their cheeping. Was he really, George wondered, the more self-possessed of the two, or was it only that he had discovered, over time, how to fall in with the girl’s rather perplexing demands?

But Leona was generous. She did not make him suffer for his lapse. ‘Ma,’ she began, ‘– I call her Ma, you know, though we aren’t related – Ma,’ she went on, ‘has taken a great liking, George – she doesn’t always, you know. Normally – but why should that surprise you? She’s sharp, Ma, very, you’d be astonished at what she can see in people, and at first glance too. She has seen something in
you
– in Hector too, though not in just anybody, she isn’t
general
. She sees
into
people, it’s a gift. And usually they know it immediately – Hector did, didn’t you Hector? – and feel easy with her. That’s why we’re all so free here. It isn’t me,
I’m
not easy. But
she
is, you’ve no idea. And good too. Wonderfully. She’s been wonderfully good to
me
.’

George had no idea what all this meant, and doubted, from the look of him, that Hector did either; but he did feel easy, and understood that Leona was not speaking only for her Ma.

From where they stood at the verandah’s rails, he watched that shadowy figure, with the smaller one at her side, move about among the square bee-boxes, loosing clouds of smoke out of her sleeves, and felt a pleasant drowsiness and lack of concern for himself, an assurance that he could leave now and come back, and when he did there would be a place for him.

‘I should be off,’ he said. It did not bother him that he was leaving the field to Hector, who had, after all, waited him out.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘But you will come again.’

He agreed, and set off over the lumpy yard. He did not have to look back to know that Hector and the tall young
woman were watching him go, with the little McIvor girl at Leona’s skirts. He was filled with a sense of his own lightness. Some heavier self had been laid asleep in him, and another woken that was all open to the westering glow in which the drab bush trees along his way found a kind of beauty, all their leaves glancing and the earth under them alight along its ridges, and the sky above a show, a carnival, of cloud shapes transforming themselves from forms he could name to others, equally pleasing, that he had no name for, but did not for that reason feel estranged from; he might, he thought, have a name for those later. He had the feeling that there were many things in the world that were still to come to him.

The conversation he had begun back there, he again caught up with. He had been unaware, in his preoccupation with the trees and the sky, that it had been going on all this time at the bottom of his thought. He let it lead him, and was already lost in its pleasant intricacies when he saw, hunkered down beside the track, a figure that startled him at first, and then, when he saw who it was, moved him in a way he had not expected.

It was Gemmy Fairley waiting for the McIvor girls, to see them home. He would have greeted the fellow, and found he was disappointed when Gemmy kept his head lowered, and would not look up to receive the gesture he meant to make.

G
EMMY FAIRLEY HAD
been in the settlement for almost a year. He was working alone one afternoon, slapping fresh planks onto the side of a shed, when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen. He swung round with the hammer raised and they were already on him, two blacks, an old man and a youth, standing quietly just feet away. He had not heard them coming. Making a sign that a white observer would have missed, he dropped his gaze, lowered himself painfully into a cross-legged position, and waited. The two blacks followed and they sat, all three, in a clump, just where they were.

The sign was not visible to Barney Mason’s rouseabout, Andy, who was sinking fence posts a hundred yards off on the crest of the ridge; but he did see the rest of it. He had had his eye on those blacks for a good ten minutes.

Watching them emerge out of the ti-tree swamp, the old bloke leading, very tall and thin and gliding like on his feet, he had made a good guess at where they were headed, and laying aside the crowbar, reached for his gun. He followed them all the way down the gully, then, allowing odd minutes for the thick overhang down there, picked them up again just where he expected, on the slope, where Gemmy Fairley’s hammer blows were breaking the clear late afternoon stillness.

‘Got yez,’ he whispered.

If they had strayed even an inch on to Barney’s side of the boundary he would have taken a pot at them; he would have felt justified in that. But they did not.

At one point, out in the open, they paused and looked up, bold as brass, to where he stood, pretty well hidden he had thought, and saw him, he was sure of it; any road, recorded he was there. Then boldly turning their backs on him and with no further interest in whether or not he was observing, the old one, high-shouldered and floaty, still in front, walked on. The bloody effrontery of it! The cheek! The gall!

A moment later the hammer paused, he saw Gemmy swing round; and the next thing they were sitting, all three, with their heads together having a powwow. Right there in the open where
anyone
could see them. Didn’ even bother to move to the shady side of the shed, as a white feller would, where they couldn’ be seen. Just sat like that in the open, maybe twenty minutes, maybe more.

‘Oh I kep’ me eye on ’em, you can bet on that!’ (Andy, in the excitement of having something to tell, was already telling the thing to himself.) ‘I seen every fucken move they made, you bet I did. Every fucken move. Then them two blacks got up and went right back on the path they come by.’

For a moment Gemmy had continued to sit; he saw that too. Then, slowly, he pushed himself up, reached for a handful of nails, and it was only when the first hammer blows came flying out across the gully that Andy, with a jerk, came back from the walk his mind had taken, all the way to where it had been hovering about down there, trying to catch what the confab was about, and discovered he had, back here, a fit of the pins and needles, and had to hop about, cursing, till he had worked the feeling back into his leg.

When this last bit of him had returned, he set off, shotgun in hand, at a steady pace – no need to rush – to where the feller was at work again, the sound of the hammer bouncing hard off the hillside and whipping round his ears.

Andy was in a state of high indignation. What he had just seen, he told himself fiercely, was just what he, for one, had all along suspected. The bastard was in touch with them. Always had been, secretly, and was ready now to do it openly. In broad daylight! Just wait, he told himself, till Barney hears.

He had worked for Barney for nearly two years. They weren’t close, but he knew Barney; he knew what his thoughts were on the subject of Gemmy bloody Fairley. They were the same as his own. Out of loyalty to his mate, Jock, he hummed and harred and wouldn’t admit it, but it showed. He was an open book, Barney. If he got into one of his worrying fits you couldn’t miss it. Well, it was a good thing, to stick to your mate – he believed that as much as the next feller. But what about me, he asked himself fiercely, what am
I
then? All I do is bloody work me guts out for ’im, stick up for ’im, keep me eyes open, always thinkin’ of their welfare. So why can’t you come to me, Barney, like a white man, and come out with what’s on your mind. It wouldn’ go further.

In the growing hurt to his pride, which was only part of the greater resentment he felt at the many injustices that had been practised on him, he strode fiercely downhill.

Back in Brisbane, in the time after his wife skipped off, he had had a good deal of strife, some of it with the law. He had broken into the chandler’s he worked at and stole a few bob from the till – well, six pounds in fact, and done a year in the clink. He blamed
her
. And the Californian – a very smart feller, big talker, who for a time, he admitted, had had an influence over him.

His wife had hated the bloke at first. Jealous! And had ended up bloody running off with him – what about that, then? Could you credit it? And after being drunk for a week, and getting himself into all sorts of brawls, he had gone one night to the back door of McDowells and broken in and taken the six quid, but why he had done it and how he expected to get away with it, he couldn’t say; any more than he could say why his wife, Lorrie, after sounding off for months about what a loud mouth Earl Whitney was, and a cheat and liar, should suddenly up and run off with him. He had known from the start he was the first man they would come after. So how foolish can a man be?

The world was a puzzle to Andy McKillop. He was a puzzle to himself. Two years back, he had come up here just on the off-chance looking for work, and by using some of the fast talk he had picked up from the Californian, who
continued to exert a hold over him, had persuaded Barney Mason, who was a decent cove, but soft, to give him a go. He was grateful for that. He had promised himself then that he would never let Barney down, and save for the odd breakout, which left him soreheaded and sorry for himself (he continued to blaze inwardly with a ferocity that only drink, at times, could dull), he had not. He had tried to be a mate to Barney, got sentimentally fond of Polly and the kids. That they were not as fond of him as he would have liked them to be was a disappointment, but he was used to disappointments.

As for this Gemmy – well he knew blacks, he’d had experience of ’em. In his worst period, down there, he had shared a bottle or two with the locals – it wasn’t a thing he was proud of, but never mind – and had been off, once or twice, to their camp – he didn’t boast of that, either. But it was experience. He knew ’em!

‘G’day,’ he said with a sour mouth when he reached the shed. He leaned his shoulder against the wall in a very casual manner, but the blast of heat off it got to him through his shirt and he had to shift. It unsettled him, that small mischance, but he recovered and felt descend upon him the large dignity of one who was here as a representative. ‘I see you been receivin’ visitors,’ he said, rather pleased with the understated humour he commanded.

Gemmy was squatting, a nail between his teeth. He looked up.

Yair, Andy thought, eyes, observing the yellow whites. Like one a’ them. Muddy. Mistrustful.

Gemmy lowered his gaze, and in a leisurely fashion, as if he was here with only the crickets for company, drew a nail and slapped it in. The blows flew straight at Andy’s skull. The nail head glinted in the wall.

‘Ol’ friends eh?’

Gemmy sighted along the plank, which Andy could have told him was not straight, and took another nail from his box.

His way with people he did not want to deal with was to pretend they were not there. He looked right through this
fellow now, this Andy, and he was gone. He disappeared into the glare off the wall.

Andy huffed. He knew that trick. He had felt the effect of it before. With his eyes narrowed against the sun and the shotgun across his arm, he stood his ground, all stringy indignation. Gemmy squinted at the plank, slapped the nail in.

That’s all right, feller, you take your time. I ain’t in a rush.

But personal affront was added now to his anger on behalf of the others, and with it came a burst of illumination. He saw what the feller was up to. He was letting on that those blacks had never existed. That he had never seen them. That they had never even been here, any more than he himself was. That they were hot wavering apparitions, produced by the heat or – at the sickening possibility of his old weakness coming up again to dog and defeat him, he lost the assurance he’d had of being a representative here of those who might see him at last as one of them. The sun blazed on his neck. His head throbbed. If I don’t get out of the way of this bloke, he thought, he’ll bloody nail
me
to the wall. I’ve got to find Barney. I’ve got to get in before
he
does – bloody coon!

With a hiss he turned and strode off, afire now with a need to justify himself that was at furnace heat by the time he found Barney. He could barely get the words out.

‘Andy,’ Barney told him, ‘take it easy, eh? Just slow down. What visitors?’

‘Blacks. What’d you think it’d be? Fucken blacks!’ The words bubbled in his mouth and he swung his head towards the gully, eyes blazing. He punched a fist into his palm. It was such a relief to get them out of his head at last. ‘Fucken myalls!’

Barney’s lips parted. The dent appeared in his brow.

Good, Andy thought, good. They’re in
his
head now.

‘They brung ’im something,’ he shouted. ‘On’y when I went an’ faced ’im with it, the crafty bugger’d hidden it, got it outa the way.’

He blinked. This detail had come of its own accord. He hadn’t realised till now that he had seen such a thing. His mind must have seen it though, when it took its own walk
across there and hovered round them while they sat, because he saw it as clear as day. The whole occasion presented itself to him as the clearest picture, and as it did he felt a widening calm.

‘You know, Barney,’ he said softly, ‘I never did trust that feller. I know
you
never did.’

The word trust was important to him. When it came to his lips he felt the welling of tears. Things would be on a new footing from now on. Trust me Barney. You can. You know you can. That was what his fierce silence expressed.

But if Barney heard the appeal he did not respond to it.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I dunno. Gemmy’s harmless enough.’ The same old song. That was Jock McIvor talk. Andy was incensed.

‘Jesus, Barney,’ he said, ‘didn’ you hear what I said? They come to him. Bold as brass. Why? Why did they come? What did they bring him?
He
may be harmless, but
they
aren’t, they aren’t fucken
harmless
.’

The news alarmed Barney, but he was even more alarmed by Andy, whose sense of outrage, it seemed to him, grew fiercer each time he went over it.

The fact was, things had settled in these last weeks. He did not know what Jock had said to Gemmy, he would not ask, and Jock had spared him the embarrassment of informing him, but he had said
something
. Gemmy no longer strayed where he was not wanted – not by daylight, anyway, though once or twice when he was out last thing at night –

It did not mean the problem had gone away, of course. Gemmy, just by being there, opened a gate on to things, things Barney couldn’t specify, even to himself, and did not want to ask about, that worried the soulcase out of him. But for Jock’s sake he kept mum. The very last man in the world he would open himself to was Andy. He turned away now, meaning to put an end to the occasion, but as luck would have it Jim Sweetman hove into sight, climbing the long slope towards them. Andy lurched to meet him.

‘That feller’s been receivin’ visitors,’ he shouted, all breathless again. ‘I was there, I seen it! Hell, they come right up to ’im, bold as brass. Myalls! Fucken myalls!’ – the same
words, almost, as before, but to Barney they had a different colour now that they were being addressed to Jim Sweetman.

‘Some people don’t think nothin’ of it,’ he shouted, ‘but what’d they come for, eh? What are they after? If it’s two of ’em this time, next week it’ll be twenty –’

Jim Sweetman frowned, his mouth tight with distaste at the crudeness of the fellow’s speech. He was always half off his head, this Andy. He ignored him and turned to Barney: ‘What’s he talking about?’

‘Blacks,’ Andy yelled with genuine outrage. ‘Blacks. Fucken myalls, that’s what.’

He was determined not to be ignored. He had a savage need to convince people of things; but had first, he knew, and he withered at the old injustice of it, to convince them about himself. He knew that look on Jim Sweetman’s face. He had been living with it, in one form or another, all his life. But this time things were different, he had the goods. He got control of the spit in his mouth and started in on his story, and this time, when he evoked the two blacks, he could describe them in every detail; he was astonished himself by what came to him. As if each time he approached the incident it got clearer. When they sat down with Gemmy now, he felt a burning in his right shoulder as if, all invisible, he was leaning right there against the wall of the shed, just feet away, and could see every move they made, hear every word, even if it was some blackfeller lingo they were conversing in. He was inspired.

Barney was astonished. ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ he protested. ‘You didn’t say that the first time.’ It embarrassed him that Jim Sweetman now was taking in every word.

‘You never give me the chance,’ Andy hooted. ‘I tried to, an’ you never bloody give me the chance!’ His voice was thick with emotion. He was on the edge of tears.

Jim Sweetman looked across at the line of greyish scrub, the last strip of country that was in any way comfortable to him, out of which, if this unreliable fellow was to be believed, with his wild eye and unsteady jaw and the spittle shooting out of his mouth, two blacks had walked in, just like that, as if they owned the place, then walked out again.

His own property was one of the most isolated in the
settlement. The edges of it were part of the blacks’ traditional hunting ground, and at odd seasons, in the shadowy way of those whose minds you cannot touch, they still passed through it, quietly for the most part. He had no quarrel with them – so far as he knew and so far as any black, once your back was turned, could be trusted; there were a good many white fellers round here, this Andy for instance, that he trusted less. Even now he preferred not to look at the man. He got too much heady satisfaction from being the bearer of ill news. Still …