Missus
by Ruth Park

       The old QzI
Edward w
England. ~
in the towi
Margaret
Kilkerl
iminio
land tc iaa
Flarne-hea,
Whippet, a
gunpowde
children to
Darcy, ch~
Frances, fl,~
free as a bi
knew ever
crippled, d'
cornpanio~
to Trafalg4
an(] bloorc
bini and ei
love and ri
theY Seel"
Savs flut
wril ten I
Mumma
were you
Mvself.'
evoking
an(] the
frustraw
together
M I sst ,, I
The Har,
Orange.
an(] a ha
to know
121 /
2 PI
By the same author
The Harp in the South
Poor Man's Orange
The Witch's Thorn
A Power of Roses
Pink Flannel
One a Pecker, Two a Pecker
Good Looking Women
Swords and Crowns and Rings


       With DArcy Niland
The Drums Go Bang
Missus
Ruth Park
Nelson


       1
11
XC-, '~h'Y
c i~
i
Thomas Nelson Australia
480 La Trobe Street Melbourne 3000
First published 1985
Copyright @ Kemalde Pty Ltd, 1985
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing in Publication data:
Park, Ruth.
Missus.
ISBN 0 17 006594 4.
1. Title.
A8231.3
T~peset by Setrite Hong Kong
Printed in Australia by The Dominion Press-Hedges & Bell
For the two Kates
A


       k
c
C
t
one
The old Queen was dead, and King Edward well settled on
the throne of England. In far away New South Wales, in the
town of Trafalgar, Hugh Darcy and Margaret Kilker were
born. There were but a few months between their ages, Hugh
being the elder.
Trafalgar was first settled by a veteran of that battle. He
used his prize money to go out to New South Wales with a
cargo of sheep and horses. He applied fc)r a grant on the 
wellwatered tablelands, and was assigned thirty convicts as slave
labourers. It was his fancy to give them Jack Tar uniforms to
remind him of his glorious days in Nelson's navy. He called
his property Trafalgar, and the four creeks that ran througli
it Victory, Aboukir, Copenhagen and Nile.
The natives were a trouble at first, believing the sheep to
belong to everyone, and much more easily speared thaO
kangaroos. But the master of Trafalgar made short work of
them, by inviting them to hang around waiting for white
man's titbits, and then feeding them flour cakes primed witli
strychnine. The survivors did not connect the deaths with the
white men; they believed the water had gone bad, as it


       sometimes did after a dry season. One old woman tried to
warn the white people not to drink it, but they did not
understand. She went away with the two or three others and
that was the end of them.
Martin Darcy came to Trafalgar in the mid-1880s. It was
then a small town; already a single railway line ran through to
freight out the timber milled in the encircling hills. Martin
bought a horse and shingle scoop and set up on Aboukir
Creek, hauling out gravel for the new roads. He was a sober,
virtuous man, working as long as daylight lasted. The horse
broke down before he did.
When he was forty years old he began thinking about a
wife. For some time he had been corresponding in formal
terms with a young governess on a New England station.
They had met on a train. He now went courting this girl and
in due course brought back to the dilapidated shanty beside
the gravel works a frail, dark-haired bride called Frances.
Frances entered upon her hard'life with hope and gaiety.
She had no knowledge that it was always to be hard because
her husband knew no other kind of existence. He loved her,
there was no question of that. For a short while his iron face
softened, a little red crept into his cheek. He thought he
might stroke her hair but feared his calloused hand might
catch in it and hurt her. He took off the leaking bark roof
and replaced it with corrugated iron. He bought a small
bowlegged stove so that she should not have to cook on the
open fire. He promised that, should he have a good season,
the dirt floor would be replaced by planking. Frances,
bemused by love and the conviction that at last she had
something of her own, thought it all an adventure, like
camping. It was some years before she understood that she
2
had been brought to Aboukir Creek to become a part of her
husband's life, not to have one of her own.
Soon she had a boy child, dead at birth. Tfiough she had
no family, she wept, homesick, for her native city and the
girls with whom she had attended the orphanage school.
Martin said nothing; he did not know what to say. Hewent to
a nearby farm and came back with a sleek young fO:Nterrier.
'I've brought you a bitchie,' he said, 'for company.,
At first Frances ignored the dog, seeing in her no substitute
for her infant. But soon, noticing the sweetness of the
creature's disposition, her delicate humour, she became
devoted to her. She named her Witch. The two were together
all day. There was great empathy between them, mqre than
there was between the married pair. Frances believed Witch
understood everything she said. She often talked to the dog
of her dreams for the new child she was to have, and her
growing terror that nothing would ever be different for her.
During a flood, Martin having gone to the town to help
pile sandbags on the levee, Frances's pains carne on. She was


       able to persuade Witch, a note tied to her collar, to go out
into the night to a neighbour's house.
Frances brought into life a strong boy, black-haired and
blue-eyed. Martin named him Hugh. Frances was feeble for a
long time, restless and tearful. She believed she owed her life
to the little dog, and doted on her more and more.
When Hughie was two years old, a neighbour shot Witch,
saying the terrier had chased his hens. Perhaps that was so,
but nothing could now be done. Martin carne hORe from
work to find his wife nursing the baby in the midst of her
undone housework, and the bloody body of the dog 4iff in a
sack.


       1-,
'Eichhardt shot my Witch,' was all Frances said. Martin
could not find a word. As though there were, indeed, words
of compassion struggling to get out, he suffered pain in chest
and belly. He took away the dog, but instead of burying her
he sent the body to a taxidermist in the nearest large town.
It was an expensive business, it took most of his savings,
but when Witch was returned to Trafalgar Martin was
satisfied. The taxidermist had posed the dog sitting on her
hind legs, begging, her dainty white paws turned down. Her
hide was as pure as snow; her eyes, looking through a black
mask, as dovelike as in life.
Martin's excitement at the thought of his wife's joy was so
profound it was almost sacred.
When he brought the stuffed dog into the house Frances
seemed to take a fit. She was unconscious for a long time.
When she came to her senses her gaze wandered fearfully to
the corners of the room.
'Is it goneT
'Didn't I think you'd be pleased,' said Martin.
'Dreadful, dreadful,' muttered Frances.
The doctor said she had a goitre, made worse by Hugh's
birth. He prescribed the painting of her throat and chest with
iodine, and laudanum for her nerves. The skin peeled off her
throat, and she became addicted to the laudanum.
She became very excitable, flushed and flirtatious with
casual visitors, flying into frenzies over trifles. She had
abominable nightmares and was afraid to go to sleep. The
doctor increased the dose of laudanum. Often she was
fantastically merry, though falling suddenly from laughter
into tears. Hugh's earliest memory was of his mother dancing
with him. She wore a cherry blouse with high sleeves and
4
many tucks, relic of her teaching days; it sagged from her
emaciated shoulders. To the little boy she was beautiful.
His wife's rejection of the resurrected Witch wounded
Martin irrevocably. He had wanted to please and console and
she had reacted like one half-crazy. He did not know what to
do with a madwoman. The pungent smell of the iodine and
the bandages she often wore around her flayed throat filled
him with a desire to leave Trafalgar and never be seen again.
Nevertheless he got her with child once more.
With great difficulty it was born, a dark elvish thing with
its feet back to front. Martin had decided that the child, if a
boy, should be named Oliver for his father, but after he had
looked at it he said curtly, 'Name him what you will.'
Frances called the child Jeremiah. In a month or two it was
plain he had fine features, dark eyes, and a questing look.
From the beginning she impressed on Hughie, now robust
and turbulent, that he must look after his brother, love him
more than anyone else in the world.


       Hughie promised he would do so.
After the birth of this child Martin Darcy fell into morose
depression. He was poisoned by suspicion. He accused his
wife of fathering a cuckoo on him. He stared at his 
neighbours until they backed away in embarrassment. But being
mostly Irish and German they were fair-skinned and 
paleeyed. The suspicion fossilised into certainty; he could think
of nothing else. The doctor and the parish priest 
remonstrated with him, pointing out that Frances herself was
brown-eyed and olive complexioned, but this did no good.
He had the idea on the brain.
He settled at last on.an Indian hawker, a consumptive in a
pink turban, smelling of patchouli and curry, who sometimes
5


       L_
came through the district with his pack of cheap cottons,
baby clothes, pins, ribbons and corset tapes. Frances, in
hysterical rage, mimicked herself flirting with the Indian, and
the Indian making big eyes in return.
Martin punched her. After that he never spoke to her
again. Jeremiah grew, learnt to scuttle, to walk with crutches.
Hugh never queried his responsibility for his brother. When
Jer was small and weak Hugh pushed him to school in a
handcart; later the child became as nimble as a sparrow. The
schoolchildren teased Jeremiah unmercifully, partly because
he was clever and outshone them all, but mostly because his
feet were knotted like tree roots. His difference offended
them mortally. They would have killed him if they had dared.
At eight years old Hughie was fighting for his brother,
shaping up to short and tall, being thrashed, humiliated,
bloodied. The parish priest, seeing that Martin would do
nothing about it, took Hugh aside and taught him how to
dodge or land a blow. By ten years of age Hugh had fought
every boy who tormented Jer and was given living space by
his schoolfellows. He grew up a feared brawler. But he was
not truly a fearless person. Approaching adolescence brought
a trembling diffidence. He often found a lump in his throat
for no reason. He began to look at things, stars, girls' hair,
the way a paddock of cabbages was not green but blue. He
practised using his tongue or his quick wits to get out of a
scrap if he could.
The boys did not question the situation between their
parents. They thought all fathers were like that. They never
spoke of their mother, protecting her by a conspiracy of
silence.
But Frances often talked with them. Sometimes she was so
6
out Of the world with laudanum they could not understat'd
her. Other times she spoke of Sydney, its statues, Ole
buildings so grand, steepled and turreted, the sea so b1001
swarms of richly dressed people, busy important people. f-Ile
brothers liked best to hear of a bridge that opened in tile
rniddle to let tall-masted ships go by. They could not decide
whether Sydney was like London or Babylon. Still, tiley
yearned to go there.
Hugh recognised that his mother had a voice differc"t
from other women. Pretty he called 'it, when he meJnt
refined. A nervous understanding came to him that she, t0o,
must have begun life as a preparation for somethi'19
wonderful. But all she got was a shanty for a home, constJ11t
illness, and two boys, one a cripple and one always in
mischief.
He promised himself that when he was in work he wotjld
take his mother back to Sydney where she would be hapPy'
When Hugh was twelve, and already truant and tearaw-ay'


       Frances went out one night to the creek. She knew a deep
hole above the gravel pits. Filling her pockets with shingle she
jumped in. During the day or so she rolled in the swirli'19
mud, her jacket was torn off and lay with its weighted
pockets at the bottom. So it was thought her death N10s
accidental, which was a good thing in Trafalgar where
suicides were looked upon with dread and condemnatiOl"
Long afterwards, after a flood, Martin's scoop dragged up the
muddy jacket, but he dried it and burnt it. The boys alw-0s
believed their mother had died by mischance.
After their mother's death the boys had a terrible tl"
years. Later Hugh was to think of that time as a kind of prk
country they bad perforce to pass through in order to bec 0iiie
7


       A
independent. After the funeral Hugh did not go back to
school. The nuns pleaded with him not to leave, and the
priest pleaded with Martin Darcy. Hugh was smart, wrote a
good hand, and in spite of his wildness was acheerful likeable
boy.
But Martin put the boy to work on the scoop. Jeremiah,
now handy with crutches, got to school by himself, though he
was adept at sitting beside the road looking pitiful so as to get
a lift in any cart going that way. Once he even got a ride in a
motor car. There were now at least a dozen in Trafalgar.
The War had started, but Hugh and Jeremiah knew
nothing of it. When Jer came home from school he cleaned
up the shack as best he could. He took to cooking like a duck
to water and, crumpled up like a spider on a chair in front of
the stove, he turned out far better meals than Frances had
ever done. Mistakes earned him a thump on the ear, which
cleared his brain with regard to burning the eggs or 
oversalting the porridge as nothing else might have done. He was
in deadly fear of his father and longed to poison him.
Hugh became strong and stocky. In spite of the long hc)urs
of toil he managed frequently to get into trouble. Though
thrashed by his father he went on seeking out mischief,
occasionally coming home drunk and silly. He had no money
himself but his mates were generous. Like them he believed to
be a man was to drink, and ardently he wanted to be a man.
At last he took Jer for a j oy-ride in the doctor's car. In lieu
of a year in Borstal, the sergeant birched him, delivering him
sullen and stinging to his father.
'You'd do better, Martin, to let him work in the town,' he
advised. 'He's a big lump of a lad and there's plenty of wc)rk,
with the fellows away at the fighting, and all. There's little
8
harm in him at the Present, but he's knocking around with all
the roughs. You know what that comes to in the end.'
After the sergeant had gone, Martin took down the piece
of harness he used to larrup the boys. 'I'll touch you up a bit
more,' he growled.
,You won't, Dadda,' said Hughie. He caught hold of the
strap as it came down and jerked it out of Martin's hand.
Martin, blanched with rage, rushed him, his hand extended to
take hold of the boy's throat. Hugh caught the hand with
both his, turned his back and tried to throw Martin across his
shoulder. But he was too short and the father too heavy; the
two of them crashed through the door. Hugh was up first.
Jer, poised on his hands, his crooked feet up around his belly,
swung and jigged, screaming hysterically, 'Kill him, kill him!
Hit him with the axe!'
Martin was winded. He crawled to the shadow of the 
tankstand. Something terrible and irrevocable had happened. He
was fifty-seven and his son was fourteen. He was still a man


       built like a tree but nothing could take the stealthy arthritis
from his joints or restore the steel of his muscles.
'Get!' he said.
'You bet I will,' shouted Hugh.
'And take that black bastard with you.'
Jer had never thought that if Hughie should go away to a
job he might be left defenceless with his father. His face
became yellow, it shrivelled before Hugh's eyes. He wept, he
begged. Hugh saw no way of leaving him behind.
"Course you'll come, Jer. You go and shove our things in a
sugar sack.'
The sergeant put them up in one of the empty cells at the
station, and his wife fed them. He wired a friend at a sheep
9


       property that he had on hand a good strong lad who could
buck in at anything.
'I didn't have the heart to mention the brother,' he said.
'You got a big burden there, son. Better let him go to a
Home.'
'He sticks with me,' said Hugh.
As it happened, after the first row when the squatter laid
eyes on Jer, the young boy was sent to the homestead
kitchen. He was so handy peeling potatoes, washing dishes
and plucking and skinning that the Chinese cook asked for
him as steady offsider. Also Jer made him laugh with his
chatter.
In Jer's good-looking head was a sharp brain and a burning
imagination. There was not a story he heard or read that
could not be turned roundabout and inside out and arranged
around himself.
Where this could not be credible because of his deformity
he applied the yarns to Hughie or to fictitious uncles and
aunts. Their poor mother now had her loneliness enriched
with sisters, brothers, cousins, many of extreme eccentricity
but undeniable interest. As he often found himself yarning to
men of Irish descent, Jer commonly made these kinsfolk
Irish, picking up names here and there as berries from a bush.
In fact, Frances's grandparents had been Americans, 
refugees from the war between the States. It was as well Jeremiah
was ignorant of this, or he would have had himself and his
brother descendants of Abraham Lincoln.
Hugh clipped his ears for him. He threatened to send him
back to the Dad, to put him in an institution. Jeremiah
cringed, smiled placatingly, promised, and at the next
opportunity was off again. Hugh was profoundly 
embar10
t
rassed by his lying brother. He thought it must have
something to do with his handicap, that poor Jer was
scrambled at both ends. He had not an idea in his head that
work was plentiful for him not only because he was a strong
willing lad but because everyone in the country knew that
where Hughie Darcy went Jer went as well, and he was such
an entertaining beggar.
The often illiterate ruffians of the timber camps and sheep
stations recognised what the elder brother did not, that
Jeremiah was a come-ye-all, a storyteller, kin to those
performers who had enthralled their emigrant parents at fairs
and cattle sales.
They believed him and they didn't believe him, and it did
not matter either way. All they knew came from their own
experience and that of others like themselves. With their own
eyes they'd all seen strange things, the tall parentie lizards,
upright on splayed legs, curvetting in ceremonial circles in
desert moonlight. Upside-down lightning leaping like 
dazz

       ling twigs from the ironstone plains of North Queensland.
Blackfellows dancing a thunderhead into the sky, and
drenching rain to follow it.
Some of Jer's stories were told years afterwards by 
bushmen, having become part of campfire history. There was his
grandfather's brother Archie, funeral director in a one-horse
settlement out west. He had a dummy son he couldn't stand
the sight of. Any old how, here are the pair of them working
on a departed, dummy going ooo-gah ar?d bugger-bugger in
his usual way, trying to let the Dad know that a black kid he
was friends with had finger-talked him that a flash flood had
burst a few miles to the north.
Now everyone knows that the wilder sort of black has this
11


       funny power, this bush telegraph as they call it. Someone
important dies in Darwin, and in ten minutes every old gin
around Wilcannia is gassing about it. So the dummy's friend
knew that the creek, which had had no water in it for eight
years, was due to flood. Archie understood the boy quite
well, but he always went on as if the dummy was wrong in the
head as well as deaf and dumb. So he paid no attention.
Anyway, corpse in coffin, peaceful as hell, rosary beads
twined in fingers, boyish flush on cheeks. Suddenly there's
this fearful roar and down comes the water, thirty foot high,
wipes out the town in an instant, shacks, telegraph office,
everything gone.
In a flash Archie tips out the deceased, leaps in the coffin,
and is off. Poor dummy tries to get in as well, but Archie
bashes his fingers, makes him let go. Good riddance, he yells,
and away he whirls, riding the flood like a champion. But he
was also the settlement's carpenter, and he'd bodged up that
coffin out of old grocery boxes. It busts at the seams, it leaks,
down it goes. Holy gee, gurgles Archie, I'm for it. And as he
sinks below the raging tide what should he see but the
dummy, safe as houses, sail past him riding the stiff. Help,
help, my son, shouts Archie, but the dummy gives him some
finger talk the like of which the innocent Aboriginal never
knew.
As Jer grew older he became more accomplished. Even
Hugh began to believe his stories. Had he or had he not had
an aunt who was married to a hangman? Had his father
indeed seen the tracks of a bunyip on the muddy banks of
Aboukir Creek?
Hughie never thought of his father at all. Let the old devil
ot, was his feeling. Yet when he received a letter, much 
reA
. k
A
addressed, from Mr John Kilker of Trafalgar, he was
disturbed, and concealed it from Jer. Memories rushed back,
the stony odour of the Aboukir, his mother dangling her feet
in the yellow yeasty water. White feet, nothing to them but
bone. Half blind with old anger he read and re-read the letter.
Hugh scarcely recalled Mr Kilker, who wrote a stately,
long-tailed hand. He said that Martin had been ill a long
time; the boys had better come home if they wished to see
their father alive.
Hugh was working at Brit Brit, out of Helena, at the time.
He felt all at once young, unable to sort out his emotions.
Fury swamped, him. He almost died of it. He was so distrait
he got himself bailed up by the station bull. He was gored
only in the shoulder, but the squatter was as mad as if it had
been a fatal accident. He called Hugh every kind of careless
hound, not fit to be in charge of a vealer. He would not hear
a word against the bull. Hugh was afraid he and Jer would be


       kicked out, so he blurted that his father was dying. The
squatter turned soft, had Hugh attended by the women,
carried him till he was fit to work again. Hugh hated himself
for using the old man as an excuse. He didn't want Martin to
be good for anything, even in death.
Jer was happy and excited. He took it on himself to write a
grave reply to Mr Kilker. He had Hugh at death's door,
praising his brother's courage and fortitude to the skies. He
told of their filial yearning to have a last glimpse of their
father, and their sorrow at its unlikelihood. Should things
come to the worst, he begged, would Mr Kilker take their
place at the graveside.
John Kilker was impressed and moved by this letter.
Martin had two loyal sons in spite of all the disorder of that
13


       household. The good Catholic man had not told the brothers
the half of it. After they left Trafalgar Martin had given up
work, living on his savings and the charity of others. He, who
had always been temperate, took to drink, the cheapest
rotgut. It was almost as if he wanted to kill himself. But his
strong body stood against all the abuse he handed it. It gave
in reluctantly, taking three years to do it. Martin's teeth
decayed and fell out; his bones filled with arthritis and his
muscles with rheumatism. Something was going on in his
chest; he felt it was full of boiling water.
The drink did not make him happy. He had always been
quiet; now he was a hermit. The doctor went to see him and
was driven off with curses. The ladies of St Vincent de Paul
knocked, offering food and comfort, but went away with
their soup all over their skirts. They said that rats were
running races in broad daylight over the roof.
Martin was in and out of jail for drunkenness, bad
language, and resisting arrest. The sergeant welcomed these
interludes so that he could be sure the man was properly fed.
Martin was much the same age as himself, but he looked
seventy, toothless, thin as a rake, his eyelids hanging scarlet
like an old ewe's.
During these bad years John Kilker, the iceman, and his
wife had done what they could for Martin. He had never been
a friend. Had he indeed ever been a friend to anyone? Still, in
a small town everyone knew everyone else's business, and
Mrs Kilker welcomed the challenge of doing Martin good
even though it should be by violence.
John Kilker and his wife were fire and gunpowder. They
had been wed in 1888 and not a day since had passed without
a fight. Yet the wife never saw John come through the back
14
gate without a wickedly warm tickle in her vitals, and the
sight of Eny waggling her bottom as she stirred a pot on the
fire made John feel quite astray. The result of all this was that
they had eleven children, of whom eight had survived
infancy. The two deaths amongst these had been terrible to
the parents. One child died of chickenpox. May had been
only five, a darling child. The mother, pregnant with Delia,
was almost demented. It was no wonder Delia was such a
devil. The parents, May torn from their arms, had turned
their passionate love on Kathleen, aged four. She was their
jewel, and indeed she grew up a flashing creature, joyful and
giving joy, until God took her away in a fall from a horse, she
being not quite sixteen.
John and Rowena were older then. They did not make so
much noise, but the wound was deep and never healed. They
tried not to curse God, but in their hearts they never liked
him again. Eny felt they must have done something sinful for
God to punish them so.
'I think I'll turn meself to good works,' she told John.


       'God in his mercy help the poor and needy,' thought John,
for his wife had no patience at all, and a tongue that would
take a splint from a horse'sleg.
'Sure, darling,' he said soothingly. 'Don't I already belong
to St Vincent de Paul's ? But maybe you'd find the time for a
helping hand for the poor women who've lost their men in
the fighting.'
Eny did better than that; she was a generous woman. For
most of the War years, when so many young men died, John
frequently found at his table a destitute widow or a clutch of
mute, bewildered children. She gave them beds, food,
comfort, and occasionally curry in the shape of a good


       talking-to. She stuck with Catholic families, not because of
bigotry, but because she felt at home with them, all the brave
strength, and the trusting silliness, too.
Tears came to the parish priest's eyes at the edifying sight
of Mrs Kilker kneeling in her parlour, surrounded by her own
younger ones, and six or eight children and a widow or two,
all in black, but stuffed to the craw with stew, floury potatoes
and apple cloughboy. No one in her house went to his bunk
without a round of the Rosary.
Mrs Kilker, slender and upright still, her fine hair
untouched by grey, spoke the Aves in a voice like a purling
stream. Still without missing a word, she could lash out and
land a thump on the ear of some child absentmindedly
picking its nose.
The priest thought with soft pleasure that God would
surely bless John and Eny, a credit to Dublin and Derry
respectively.
But God had not yet stayed his hand, and almost in the last
week of the War Owen Kilker fell before a bullet. He was
their third son, twenty-five years old, and taken by the Army
only in the last years because he was duckfooted and had a
slight squint. The perfect young men, strong as bulls,
incandescent with life, had already been killed or wounded.
It was easier for the parents to be resigned to Owen's
passing. He had been a slow, gloomy boy. In fact, John had
sometimes thought he was not the full quid.
'I wager he walked up to a German and asked for the lend
of a match,' he said sadly.
After Sunday Mass it was John's custom to take a little
tobacco to Martin Darcy and have a few friendly words. He
asked his wife to accompany him, saying it might take her out
16
4
t
of herself. But Eny was too wretched. She was asharbed that
she could not feel for poor Owen the unbearable woe the
deaths of her daughters had brought her. She hatec3 herself
for her cantankerous ways with the boy in life. The v Qhement
names she had hurled at him!
Snivelling a little, she went home with her YOLAng girls
Margaret and Josephine, the tail of the family. Margaret was
blooining in all directions, her face full of blushes. She burst
out of her bust bodices as if they had been made c1f paper.
Josic was disgusted and never ceased pestering her rriother to
get Margaret into stays.
Margaret thought of nothing but love; she was feverish
with dreams of love. The powerful sentiment was P,9trt of her
blood and bone. Even when she and Josie quarrellect she still
loved her sister. Now she took her mother's hat &td coat,
wept with her for Owen.
,Ile was that slow on the uptake,' mourned Eny , 'Didn't


       he have me on my hind legs most of the time. Ab, \vhat was
the poor boy born for?'
'To obey, honour and serve God in this woricil. and be
happy with Him for ever in the next,' spoke ul) young
Josephine. She was a neat little girl with big eyes an IQ a small
chin. Eny was bored with children by the time she caltne along
and had greeted knowledge of her pregnancy witYl storms,
yells and curses. Somehow this had filtered through to Josie.
She was aware she was a cuckoo in the nest and the a wareness
made her sad, clever, and spiteful.
Her mother gave her a brooding look. in the name of
God, Josie, don't show off. Get out into the kitQhen and
ma~e us all a cup of tea.'
josie sulked out. She thought, and she was right, that if
17


       Margaret had given a correct catechism answer she would
have been praised as a good Catholic.
Meanwhile John had found Martin Darcy so close to death
he wrapped him in a blanket, put him in his own 
wheelbarrow, and ran him to the hospital. There he died.
John Kilker took it badly, not that he was grieved for
Martin, who for years now had been like a tree eaten out by
dry rot, still standing but dead as a doornail. He felt
somehow that Owen and Martin had been similar, decent
men both, but inexplicably deprived by life. John was so low
spirited he had to take a week off from the iceworks, the first
time ever. Rowena fetched the doctor who thought in dismay
that perhaps the Spanish influenza had come to Trafalgar.
But it had not. John was up and around in a few days. What
had bowled him over was a glimpse, as it were, of the
indecipherable shapes of the future.
Later, but feeling that this no longer mattered, he sent a
telegram to Hugh that his father had died.
A month or more after Martin Darcy was buried, Hugh
awakened with a sudden, fierce resolution. It was as if
someone had tapped him on the shoulder as he slept. He told
Jer he was going to Trafalgar.
'Get out,' said his brother. 'The old shit's dead.'
'I'm going,' said Hugh.
Jeremiah begged and wept; he did not want to be left
alone. At the back of his mind always was the fear that he
would be abandoned. Hugh said he would be back in a few
days.
'But why, why?' lamented the cripple.
He was afraid he might take the influenza while Hugh was
18
A
t
f
a,,k,ay, that he might die all in a day as people said could
happen.
The plague had enveloped the earth like a poisonous fog.
The world had lately seen such anguish, such catastrophe, so
many millions of people dead in the War. Then, as if Death
gripped humanity as a cat a mouse, came the epidemic. How
it raged in Australia! The people scarcely had the heart to
rejoice that the War was over at last. They went to their work
wearing cotton masks soaked in disinfectant, not knowing if
they would ever return home. A man could fall down in the
street, marked for the grave. A housewife might exchange a
few words with her neighbour at noon, and a day later
everyone in her house was blackened and stiff. Every old
wives' tale in the drawer came out. People wore around their
necks little bags containing garlic, asafoetida, saints' relies,
or private amulets such as a lucky bean or a blessed medal.
The authorities did what they could, but since they did not


       know how or why the pestilence had come, they were 
helpless. Town councils took matters into their own hands. A
brutish, instinctive knowledge told them that in this crisis law
had nothing to do with anything; all was between them and
Death. In Trafalgar, which had had no case of Flu, the
people gathered and decided that no strangers should be
permitted to enter the town for the duration of the epidemic.
This was easy to do. It required only four shotguns. The town
lay low in a circle of hills. There was a road in and a road out.
The railway track appeared through a tunnel in the north and
speared into another in the south. Men patrolled the road day
and night, others with shotguns were on duty at the station.
Trains could unload and load freight, but the townsmen did
19


       1
home-cut curly hair.
'God knows I'm with you in your bereavement, son,' he
explained, 'but it would be as much as me life was worth.
Them Trafalgar men are tigers.'
the work with no contact with passengers and crew.
Hugh wired John Kilker of his arrival, but it was not until
the guard came through the train that he learnt he would not
be allowed to alight at Trafalgar station.
He argued with the man, explaining that his father was
dead, it was his duty to see to the grave. The man pitied the
boy, fresh-faced, wearing a Sunday suit, straw boater on
As the train pulled into the station, all the carriage doors
and windows closed, Hugh made a bolt for it. A shotgun's
grim snout shoved him back. Hugh had never been held up
by a gun; he could not believe it. The rage which had driven
him on his journey blazed out.
He had something of the eloquence of Jer. Shouting
defiance and expostulation, he ran through the train and
slipped out into the goods yard. A jet from a firehose
punched him in the chest.
'Get back, get back!' he heard above the snarl of the water.
The jet chased him as he dodged; when he fell it whacked him
like an iron bar across the seat of the pants. He staggered to
the guard's rear van, where he was hauled inside.
'You can't beat the beggars, son,' commiserated the man.
The passengers, moved by sympathy and pleasure in the
commotion, began to shout and jeer. The stationmaster
feared a riot, and signalled for the train to pull out of the
station. A heavy man ran shortwindedly beside the van.
Hugh recognised the artless red face of Mr Kilker.
'The funeral was real lovely, son,' gasped out Mr Kilker.
1
t
let
k
'St Vincent's, the Hibernian brass band, Masses, all respect.'
The train gEthered speed. Hugh, hanging out the van door,
saw a young girl, curls down her back, run up and take Mr
Kilker's arm. The old fellow looked as if he might throw a fit,
he was so red, Hugh vaguely recognised in the girl Margaret
Kilker, who had been in a class below his at school.
The guard took Hugh's clothes and dried them off
somewhat near the boiler He gave the boy a cup of tea.
'What you gonna do now, mateT
'Get off at the next station and wait for the next train back
to Helena.'
'You go back to Trafalgar after the Flu's over,' advised the
guard.
On the return trip, damp, humiliated, Hugh felt his chest
stuffed with t.-ars. He could not remember why he had come


       on this journey, unless it were to make certain his father was
dead and underground. But now there was no freedom or
relief in that thought.
He felt unreasonable hatred of Trafalgar as well. The town
had done nothing for him while he lived there, and now it had
driven him otit with abuse and a torrent of water. While he
fumed thus, one side of his brain commended the
townspeople's attitude. He would have felt the same way in
this time of plague. But Trafalgar had cast him out, like
garbage. He was to hate the town for the rest of his life.
At Helena he had a five-mile walk out to Brit Brit station,
but he welcomed it.
It was night, winter, sky gauzy with stars, waterfalls
chirring in the dark. Hughie left the road and went into the
bush. For an hour he wept, howled, tore up the grass. He
did not know why. His mother, his childhood, the lasting
2


       burden of Jer? All those things, and something more 
profound, more horrifying: if his father could grow old and die,
so could he.
Jer tenderly cleaned and pressed his brother's suit. In no
time he had turned Hugh's misadventures at Trafalgar into
an epic. The station boss, thinking the boy had had a rotten
deal, his Dad gone and all, gave them a small bonus cheque
when they left Brit Brit. Hugh, holing up in a small pub in the
middle of nowhere, was drunk for a week.
'Don't you die, Hughie, don't you never leave me,' Jer
pleaded day after day.
After that Hugh went on regular sprees. He was under age,
but that was no problem. He became a shearers' cook, with
Jer as his offsider. The team was a well-known one, and the
men were glad when they saw the Darcy boys turn up at a
station instead of some Borgia. These men mostly had
stomach trouble and ate bicarbonate of soda by the spoonful.
They said their guts were ruined by the stooped positions in
which they shore. But the real reasons were too much booze,
and the unskilled, dirty cooking.
Jer now had a guitar. He was taught to play by a shearer so
cracked about music he had once made a viola from a
kerosene tin. Jer learnt countless songs; once through and he
had the tune, twice and he had the words. He had a pleasing
breathy voice and did best with succulent ballads. Often he
was given a few shillings for playing at smoke-ohs or
weddings and it did not take him long to become ambitious to
earn enough money to have his feet fixed.
'But you'll stick with me until I can manage for meself,
won't you, HughieT
For as Hugh became interested in girls, often on a Saturday
22
1
i
4
afternoon riding thirty miles, his good duds tied up in an
oilskin behind him, to attend a dance, Jeremiah became more
and more panicky.
'Them girls,' he said, 'they wouldn't have me in the house,
and you know I got to stay with you, Hughie.'
11 ain't getting married ever,' answered his brother. He
crouched before a looking glass, rubbing the softened end of
a candle into his top lip, where a downy moustache faltered.
'You will, you will,' mourned Jer. 'And what will become
of me thenT
'You keep moaning,' said Hugh, 'and you'll cop what
you're looking for. We had this out two, three years ago
when I got that guitar for you. What I said then I mean now.'
He rubbed his palms, glistening with brilliantine, over his
hair, put on his hat, and left.
Jer could have cried. He began to play sadly: 'I dreamt I


       dwelt in marble halls with diamonds and pearls at my feet.'
A passing shed hand looked in the window.
'I seen marble once,' he said.
'WhereT
'In a bank. It looked like fiver.'
'Bloody nong,' shouted Jer. 'When would you be in a bank
unless you were holding it up?'
He was agitated, banging his crutches on the floor,
scratching catlike cries out of the guitar. He got out the holy
picture the little girl Bridget had sent him, of a poofter angel
hoicking a kid in a nightie back from a cliff edge, and said a
Hail Mary. He was in his heart religious and often prayed.
The little girl's father had given Hugh the guitar for Jer, on
the only occasion Hughie had gone away and left his brother
by himself.
23


       1
The child Jer had known that his only weapons against the
world were his wits and his two funny feet. When Hugh was
sixteen or seventeen, and became infatuated with that girl and
this, the lame boy began to stage fake suicides. The first time
Hugh was almost demented, the small crumpled figure, the
empty bottle of Lysol, the burn or two around the mouth.
The second time he stood off and watched until Jer
cautiously opened his eyes to see what was happening.
The third time Hugh threw him in the creek. The water was
shallow but Jer was mortally afraid of drowning. Hugh
watched the boy flounder for a while, then hauled him out.
He said:
'You and me got strife, Jer. You can't go on all your life
hanging onto me like a tick. I'm going to take a job
somewhere, and you're going to stay here.'
Jer screamed, wept, begged, but Hugh was firm. He had a
word with the boss, a fatherly man who agreed with his
decision.
'I've made up my mind to do a spell farmhanding, up Juno
way,' Hugh told Jer. 'You'll be offs1ding for Charley.
You'll be on a good thing. He thinks the world of you.'
Charley was the homestead cook, an old Chinese. It was a
step up for Jer, a little room of his own, lashings of good
tucker, the missus to keep an eye on him.
Jer gaped at Hughie who said uneasily, 'It's only for two
months. I'll send you a postcard every week.'
'I'll do meself in, I really will this time.'
Jer was greenish yellow. Hugh, at seventeen, was hard put
to it to stand his ground.
'Right. You want to do that, you do it. But you'd be a real
nit. Why, you might have your feet fixed by the time you're
1
1
41
twenty-one, dancing and playing football and everything.'
But Jer would not be consoled, until the boss threatened to
kick the seat of his pants through his teeth.
Hugh could turn his hand to anything. Pruning trees,
digging spuds , disorganising a tomcat, fixing a feed for the
men when the cook came down with the staggers. On Butt's
property, a few miles out of Juno, they liked him so much the
old man said he could have a regular job if he felt so inclined.
'Like hell,' thought Hughie, though he answered pleasantly.
Juno put his hair on end. It was like a thousand other small
country towns. At five when the shops shut their doors
and put their lights out it began to croak. When the pubs
closed, it dropped dead. One stray dog trembling in a
doorway, a horse trough half-full of scum and Mintie papers,
a yellow light shuddering above the crossing. Not in a million
years would you think that anyone lived there.


       On his day off Hugh couldn't wait to get into town, and he
couldn't wait to get out of it either. Its voice was the voice of
everything lost and pointless in his life.
He had a postcard to Jer in his pocket. He shoved it
through the slot at the post office. It wasn't much of a
picture, just the local forge with a draught horse and dray
beside it. He had a sudden vision of young Jer in another
smithy, patching someone's dungarees with rivets. Or sitting
on his bunk, stitching on a button. Handy with a needle Jer
was, and always willing to do a job for some harnhanded
mate. He made a few bob out of it, too. Working men were
not mean.
Hugh missed his brother. He could see that he'd spend the
rest of his life being haunted by Jer, resenting him when he
had him on his back and miserable as hell when he hadn't. He


       j
was glad he was on the last week of his job at Butt's. The
Butts had several daughters, all too young for him, mad with
the giggles, and the only woman in the kitchen had her front
teeth missing and a husband as jealous as if she still had
them.
Mooching about in Juno, Hugh was in such a stinking
temper that when he heard the sniggers and growls of male
voices around the corner he broke into a gallop. If there was
to be a brawl he didn't want to miss it.
Six or seven men, mostly young, mostly full to the gills,
had an old fellow bailed up behind a parked truck. The half
light showed grey hair, but he had his fists up, businesslike.
'Hey, give the poor old cow a chanceP
Hugh hopped in, showing off right and left, chopping and
jabbing, until an uppercut lifted him clean off his feet. As he
hovered, for a split second his mind like crystal, it came to
him that it was the old cow who had dropped him.
When he returned to the world he found a school kid 
bathing his eye and a tubby policeman in shirt sleeves sitting
beside him drinking a beer. He was in someone's kitchen. His
assailant glared at him from beside the stove.
'You can go a bit,' he said grudgingly.
'Not as far as you,' said Hugh.
The man looked like a retired gladiator, thick ears and eyes
stitched in deep by old blows.
'Old cow, is it?'
'Well, Chris'sake,' said Hugh, checking that his jaw was
still on its bearings, 'you must be forty if you're a day.'
He could scarcely imagine anyone older than that and still
alive.
'My Dad is fifty-five,' spoke up the kid, 'and it was
]k
9
.1
i
J1
because those men said things about me that he was fighting.'
'Well, I was on his side, dammit,' said Hugh.
'You got one peeper bunged up, too,' said the tubby cop,
pleased. He turned to the girl. 'You forget all about it now,
Bridget. Them blokes just wanted to get a rise out of the Dad
here. It'll all die down now they've had their fun. I got four
of them for disturbing the peace, and that Dave Crookall, the
splinters will be working out of his elbow till next Christmas.'
Hugh found it comfortable in the kitchen, though it had
the queer look about it that spoke of no woman being
around. Even the kid, who was about twelve, had that look.
Her black hair was scraggy, and the school uniform she wore
had a blue button sewn on with white thread. An argument
was going on about the school dance. The father said she


       didn't have to go, and she, her eyes flashing, said she would
and be damned to the lot of them.
'And if no one will dance with me,' she said, 'I'll spit in
their eye.'
She was at that age when her body could make up its mind
about nothing, legs too long, hands too small, little breasts
like new potatoes and teeth too big for the tender, trembling
mouth. She was as hurt and upset as a twelve-year-old could
be, and she was not going to let anyone know about it.
'I'll take you,' said Hugh, 'if you don't mind a bloke with
one eye and a busted lip.'
Hugh never knew what it had all been about, nor did he
care. He meant to ask the Butts what people had been saying
about the girl but he forgot.
He kicked himself for offering to take a twelve-year-old
schoolgirl to a dance, and he a man of seventeen. Jer could
scarcely believe it.


       it
'You must have been nuts. What'd you get out of it?'
'Not a cracker, you crude bugger. But you got the guitar,
didn't youT
The father had fetched it out from under a bed, saying a
mate of his had left him with it when he went off to the War
in 1915. He'd copped his. Maybe the young brother of whom
Hughie spoke could have some fun with it.
Jer caressed the instrument lovingly. Now and then he
looked at the holy picture Bridget had sent him. Just like a
kid to give him something like that, he thought. She probably
thought he still went to church. All that stuff.
It was a funny thing to have happened, thought Hughie.
He recalled the shy thrill of the skinny half-child body in his
arms. Oh, she was triumphant amongst those awkward Juno
kids with their puffed sleeves and frills and frizzed hair, that
she alone could flaunt a handsome stranger, a grown-up
man, a king!
'You did a real decent thing there, taking my girl Bridget to
the dance,' said the old man as he gave him the guitar in its
dusty case. 'She won't forget it, and neither will 1. And you
can handle yourself well in a stoush, too.'
Separation from Hugh settled Jer down a little. But as he
grew older he developed other habits. Because he was
deprived of living fully, he had intense curiosity about other
people's lives. There was not a man in any camp whose swag
or duffle bag he had not examined. He was a knowing little
fellow. He knew the man whose clothes -were well made, old,
dirty and ragged though they might be, was possibly running
away from something, even if it were only a wife. He sought
for clues in the man's letters, the photographs in his wallet,
his subjects of conversation. Jer was so astute, so intuitive,
9
0
that he often hit on the right answer to his own questions. He
knew a great deal about everyone; it pleased him to sit in the
circle about the fire at night and think: 'You with your legs! I
could dob you in to the cops tomorrow if I wanted.' He
called this Jer power. It was his secret strength.
Once or twice he was caught ratting a man's belongings,
and slapped over the head. Strangely, these men seemed to
understand what he was after. They did not accuse him of
thieving. They were indulgent towards him. Jer did not care,
but Hugh was humiliated.
When the last shed cut out for the season, Hugh said,
'What say we go back to Trafalgar for a couple of weeks,
look up some of the old mates?'
He longed to make that town envy him. He wanted to bust
up his cheque there, flaunt his money around, let people see
his cream flannel waistcoat with the cornelian buttons. He
wanted his old companions to see how far a man could go


       when he left Trafalgar.
Jer did not want to return but he had no choice.
In Trafalgar Margaret Kilker still thought of Hugh Darcy.
She had schoolgirl dreams about him, taking him from the
train carriage and having him walk down the grassy road with
her, his arm around her waist. She could not reconcile the
loud, dirty schoolboy she indistinctly remembered with this
stunning young man. His face was not with her day and
night, her mother kept her too busy for that; but when it was
it was as clear as a picture, the straight black brows, the
bloom in his checks. For Hugh had a skin as fine as a china
cup. The ravaging Australian sun had done not a thing to
change his Irish heritage. A long triangle of carnation
suffused each cheek.


       'You'd think he painted,' thought Margaret.
The girl never expected to see Hugh Darcy again. She went
to socials and dances with other boys. But at the back of her
head Hugh remained, not as real as a movie actor, but a good
deal more solid than someone in a story.
9
two
None of the Kilker children took after their mother except
Margaret, a little, and certainly Delia. She was so wayward
her father described her as going through life in a series of
crosswise leaps.
The mother was a creature of electric sparks. She had the
fatal Irish temperament, knocking your head askew one
moment and the next not thinking twice about giving you her
last crust of bread. In Margaret these traits had lessened and
declined. Eny's dauntlessness was muted into the ability to
endure and endlessly forgive. Eny scorned forgiveness. She
left all that class of thing to God.
When Hughie and Jer returned to Trafalgar Margaret was
grown up and had forebodings about many things. When she
was twelve Auntie Alf had read the tealeaves for her. She said
Margaret would never get married.
'What will happen to me if I don'tT
'You'll have a peaceful life like me, and devote yourself to
the Church.'
Margaret got the horrors. Fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, and
she was still imagining herself like Aunt Alf, trying to make
-11


       ends meet in a threadbare rural presbytery, getting excited
over the parish bazaar. Josie, present at the tealeaf reading,
had worked very hard to keep this dreary picture before her
sister.
At fifteen Josie was a valued junior at Capper's Universal
Providers. She wore a black skirt and white blouse, and the
blue enamel watch on a black cord that Auntie Alf had given
her. Three evenings a week she attended accountancy 
instruction at the local High School. Eny thought she was out of her
mind. Noel Capper, of some importance as the son of the firm,
had already made application to John Kilker to begin walking
out with Josephine when she turned sixteen.
Where the other Kilkers were broad and soft, Josie was
narrow and hard. She tormented Margaret, the credulous
lump, with thoughtful vindictiveness. Though she longed
obsessively for her mother's favour, she rubbed Eny up the
wrong way with everything she did. The unhealed wound
within Josie bled every day.
Josie knew her worth. Her bones were made of iron, her
brain sharper than any other in the family. She had eyes like
blue porcelain and elegant feet and hands. Still, her mother
did not love her, or, if she did, did not show it. When young,
Josie had sometimes thought of drowning herself in the
creek, or even the cesspit. She had confessed this to Auntie
Alf, her only friend within the family except her father. Aunt
Alf loved and supported Josephine. She knew that the girl's
mother, so wicked-tongued, so swift to judge, could never
understand a child so different from herself. Alf knew, too,
the secret damage inflicted by the indifferent parent.
Rowena Kilker had begun as a Mullins. Her father was a
slight man with beautiful, treacherous blue eyes. It was not
r '
his fault he started with a large head and dwindled down to a
pair of wasp legs: his poor mother was carrying him during
the Famine. She had nothing but a daily handful of Indian
corn with which to build his bones and nerves. All his
features jostled together in the middle of his face and he was
never seen without a downpour of a cold.
Still, Eny loved him, and as soon as she was old enough she
applied for emigration papers for them both. As he was an
actressy little fellow, he put on a great show of lamentation
for the neighbours, referring to the departure from his
starving country as a white martyrdom.
'Won't I make it a red martyrdom if you don't shut your
face,' said his daughter. She was a grand girl but altogether
too forthcoming with the back of her hand. It was a mystery
to all how Willie had begotten her.
'Come on, Dadda,' she persuaded, 'isn't it the strong
climate that will lay waste your catarrh? I hear they have
sunshine even at Christmas.'
Her father put on a stubborn lip.


       'And the very minute you're on the ship,' coaxed his
daughter, 'you can set about growing dundrearies!'
Mr Mullins's long ambition had been to grow fine tresses
of hair at the sides of his clean-shaven face. He had seen
pictures of the English parliament which looked like an acre of
seaweed. Even in Ireland the dandies swanked about between
feathery sideburns so long they sometimes blew over the curly
brims of their hats. Mr Mullins's master had such dundrearies,
and he took jealous care that none of his servants sprouted
any of the same.
'The dishpot!' brooded Rowena's father.
Escape from this despot and the prospective grandeur of
33


       dundrearies was what brought the father to Australia.
Unfortunately he was light-fingered and, having been caught
ratting his fellow passengers' kit, he was given a rough deck
trial and sentenced to a pitch cap. It was only the chaplain's
eloquence that saved him from this severity, for the painting
of the head with tar meant that the scalp as well as the hair
was destroyed. Peevishly, the emigrants compromised by
shaving him, face and head, as bald as a skull.
It was a brutal blow to old Willie. He sulked in his
boarding house bed until Rowena had to fetch the priest to
him. It was this man who found a post for the pair of them on
a farm north-west of Sydney, the father to work with the
crops and Eny to milk and help cook for the homestead. Still
Willie would not venture forth. He said he would lurk in the
town till his hair had grown decently. It was arranged that
Eny would go on to the situation at Chanadah, near the
settlement of Juno, and Willie would follow her as soon as
possible.
Eny left her father with misgivings and tears. He was just
the kind to use all their savings to take the ship home and
never leave her a word. But once she was in the train, her
straw hamper on the rack above, her Rosary beads in her
pocket, and her hatpin held ready on her lap, she forgot her
worries. The hatpin was there on the advice of the Father,
who warned her that colonial men were airy beyond belief.
Autumn was on the land. The sky might have been like
blue enamel, but the wind had a tweak in it. Eny had been
told that in New South Wales the trees were always green, the
grass brown, and water was not to be seen. But this was not
true. The train drummed many times over the suave coils of
great rivers. Amongst the freckled gums shone steely trickles
1,
rounded rocks. Skewbald cattle crowded
betxNeen huge thick as flies about jampots. Rows of poplars,
around them, vereigns, marked out the boundaries of vast
yellow as so some being harvested for potatoes, others
fields, velvet black,  marvelled.
with the dry haulms still standing. Eny
'A body wouldn't go hungry in a million years,' she
thought, and said a Hail Mary on the strength of it.
The railway led between the hills. Eny fell asleep, waking
some time later to find herself alone in the carriage except for
a party fondling her ankle and about to make free with her
garter. Instead of being an airy colonial lad, he was a small
Dresden china knick-knack, with a baby face and a tall hat
like an unlicked cat.
Rowena sent him tumbling with one blow. She had a
moment of guilt at hitting so venerable a man, but that soon
passed, and she shied his hat through the window.
Apparently expecting a murder, with himself on the wrong
end, the granddad grabbed up his portmanteau and fled the


       carriage. Still, Eny was shaken. She sucked her knuckles and
thought how right the priest had been. She was still ruffled
when she got out at Juno, where she was to be met by
someone from Chanadah homestead. Juno was a siding where
the slow north and south trains stopped once a week. It
served half a dozen small settlements, placed like potholes
amongst the melon-green hills. Not a thing moved at Juno.
The noble landscape was so silent Rowena thought she'd
been struck deaf. She washed her face and hands at a tank
beside the tin shed with the fine name on it, and shook the
dust and smuts from her hair.
She now saw a ball of dust bowling down the thin road
from the hills. In a few moments a horse and trap emerged
4
1 !
4


       from the cloud, and Steve Tookey was with her.
'You took your time!' she burst out.
Words of music and poetry rose to Steve's lips, for he wa
a terrible fellow for the girls. When he saw this one, the re
mane down her back taking fire from the sun, her face clear
under the stiff straw boater, but a watermark around he
white neck from the train soot, everyone else in the world
vanished and he knew he had to have her.
They drove through the big beaming landscape in a daze, a
shared folly of delight. Eny did not even notice as they passed
Juno, two horse-troughs, a farrier's shop, a general store and
a tin church. The idea of being kissed, ever, ever, by anyone
but Steve Tookey made Eny's teeth shudder. The impact of
his nearness upon her innocence made her feel a trifle out of
her mind. She dared not open her mouth lest some foolish
unexpected sound came out, a giggle or whimper. There was
not a thing about him, from his tan highlow boots to the strip
of court plaster on his nose where he had run into someone's
fist that did not wound her heart deliciously. Her body, that
all unconsciously for some years now had been alert to every
young man who came along, saying in its own way, 'is this
the one? Is this he?' burst into bloom.
She was so discomposed by love that when she finally met
the mistress of the farm the woman thought she was a bit
thick in the head. She looked with distaste at Rowena's bold
tail of hair.
'Haven't you put your hair up yet, my girl? We'll have
none of those old country ways at Chanadah!'
She commanded Eny to get it bundled into a cap before
supper that evening.
The girl had been well trained at the Big House in her Derry
36
1
village. She was an excellent dairymaid and could in a pinch
wait on table. She was also required to clean, wash, assist the
cook, feed the hens, dogs and cats, and do a multitude of
other jobs, all this for twelve pounds a year and her keep. She
must have given satisfaction, although looking back at those
months Rowena perceived she had lived in a dream. She
could think of nothing but Steve.
Their meeting was more like a collision than anything else.
Her passion, her bliss, was so private, so much a part of her,
that all her life she kept it to herself. She never gave as much
as a hint to any of her girls when they idly chattered about
romance, not even Kathleen, her dearest. She did not dwell
on it herself; its primitive holiness must not be defined by
words. Only when she was being married, and she heard the
words 'with my body I thee worship' did she cry out silently
'Oh, Stevie, wasn't that the truth!' and weep inside her for
what could not be.
For, like so many roaring affairs, this one came to nothing.


       Steve Tookey, foundering in love as he was, believed he
would be betraying his manhood if he changed his ways in the
slightest. Bravely he fought his inclination to do what
Rowena expected, to settle down and take a steady job and in
due course wed her.
At this time Steve was twenty-four and had been in the
Colony six years. He had' arrived as an apprentice
wheelwright, and found work immediately. But he was a
devil to fight. In fact, his nickname around the country was
Leather, because he threw it so often. No sooner did he hear
of a likely scrapper at some peppertree town in the inland
than he was off. It seemed he could not rest until he had
licked every man within riding distance.


       A
He broke his indentures and was brought to court for that,
but his master the smith, a Salvation Army man who liked the
boy, paid his fine and released him.
'He's like a tomcat or one of them tumultuous dogs, Your
Honour,' he explained to the magistrate. 'It's in his nature
and only prayer will cauterise it out of him.'
Steve led a wandering life, mostly working as striker in
whatever forge he came across. He was of middle height but
built like a blockhouse, honest, cheerful, with not a thought
in his head beyond the next fight or feed or kiss.
Eny could not turn her head without his disappearing
somewhere, his gloves on a string over his shoulder. In two or
three days he'd be back, sometimes with both eyes bunged
up, though mostly unmarked. Rowena tried everything,
tears, reproaches, seduction, rages.
She went privily to Steve's great friend, Constable Jim
Oyster.
'Has he got you into trouble, my girl?'
'He has not,' she fired back. 'But he's the one for me and I
don't want to waste time.'
'You're not going to change Leather Tookey,' warned the
constable. 'Take him as he is, Eny. He's a lovely fella.'
But Rowena could see no future for herself or any possible
children with her husband disappearing all the time, never in
regular work. And what would happen when his strength
went and he could no longer lift the hammer? There was, too,
her old father to consider. Any husband of hers must be
prepared to take him into his house when Willie could not or
would not work. The quarrels with Steve grew more frequent,
more cruel. It was as if they had moved into a country where
a row of thunderheads always towered upon the horizon. The
1
1
1
38
fights left Eny with a hopeless ache in her breast. It was not
only fear but anger that he did not find her more diverting
than knocking the head off some blameless fellow thirty miles
up the line.
At last Steve did not come back. He had been taken into
custody for brawling with his opponents' supporters. That
was bad enough, but he stretched the arresting sergeant as
well, and got six months in the local jail. Rowena was so
upset she lost her head entirely, told the mistress a few home
truths, and was turned out without notice and no reference.
She decided to go back to Sydney to her father, but a
hundred miles down the line she was too distrait to travel
further. She left the train at a town called Trafalgar, and
went to a boarding house, where she got a job as a skivvy
within a day or so. She tried to calm herself and think


       everything out. But Steve's fresh ruddy face was before her
night and day. She longed and longed for him. She turned
and twisted on her bed, the hot darkness full of her memories
of him. For the first time the Irish songs had meaning for her,
they filled her heart with anguish. Their words, dear dark
head, swan-white breast, true grey eye, applied to no other
man but Steve Tookey.
At last she made the usual excuse of the illiterate that her
eyes were troubling her, and got the mistress to write a proud
postcard to the jail where Steve was serving his sentence. The
old woman saw the pathos in it, the droop of Eny's bright lip,
and said impulsively, 'In the name of God, girl, why don't
you go to him?,
'Indeed I won't,' retorted Eny. 'I wouldn't give him the
satisfaction.'
She was prepared to fly to Steve the instant she had word.
39


       But the postcard was never answered. Her self-respect grew
Cold, her pride dim. She remembered what Constable Oyster
had said and wept painful tears. But she was not one for 
selfPity. Instead she fanned her anger against Steve Tookey, too
wrapped up in himself to know a good thing when he saw it.
Her chest ached as if it had a skewer stuck in it, but she tossed
her head more often than she hung it.
As always in the Colonies, there were far more men than
women, and at every dance men cavorted with each other, he
who was the lady wearing a handkerchief tied on his arm. So
in no time every variety of young man from the chemist's
educated son to the butcher's delivery boy began to call.
Also Rowena was a beauty then, skin like a petal, waist as
small as a whippet's, blue eyes full of fire.
It was fortunate that the boarding-house missus was like a
mother to her young servant. She advised her, should she
want to settle down, to take John Kilker.
RO`wena had already recognised that John Kilker was in all
ways the reverse of her own father, solid as the Vatican, an
employee of the Trafalgar iceworks, a man whose strong arm
would never be in some other place massacring a stranger
when a woman needed it to lean on.
'There's that sister Of his,' she objected.
John had emigrated With his elder sister. As she was as
plain as a box she had ended up as a presbytery servant. The
Trafalgar parish had dra\vn the short straw. John took a job
in that town to be near by.
From the time she was born the world behaved to Alf as if
she had chosen to be homely out of sheer spite. When she was
nine her mother, who was also John's, went to heaven. Her
stepmother made no bones about letting the child know she'd
a Miff or. The stepmother had made a mistake marrying
crack d took it Out on the children. She was a great one
the father an rk cupboards and not letting them Out
for putting them in da  hat they had
ned up, though they had no idea w fancy name
o lay her tongue to the
until they Ow She refused t
clone wrong and called the child Agnes. But Alf knew who she
of Alfreda,  man until she was twenty and John
,Nas, She fought this wo f his life when he gave
fifteen. The father did the best deed o
for then, to enlist in a Church drive for 
emipermission ould they
gration. fhe stepmother hit the roof. How c
manage without the young Ones' wages9 she squealed. The
father shut her up. He intended to desert the woman as soon
as the children were safe on the ship.  John could
Alf was as flat as a stoat, and yellowish, too.
lift her with one hand. Yet, like many people starved in
childhood, she was an indefatigable worker.


       inside Alf there was someone valiant and resolute, a
majestically big woman. if it had not been for the
stepmother, the big woman might have been all there was of
Alf. As it was, the stepmother had left her mark. Alf had a
stomach that took the huff at anything. She feared confined
spaces. Even sticking her head in the wardrobe to get out her
Mass-going coat was a feat of courage for Alf. She had
fearful nervous spells: trembling, distraught, so irritable the
sound of a bird chirping nearly drove her crazy. Alf had learnt
to control these periods of suffering by becoming silent, going
about her work step by step, leaning, on God. The priests
thought she was sulking. Not one of them realised that every
time he spoke he narrowly escaped a good rap on the hooter.
The turnover of priests at Trafalgar was extraordinary.
The Bishop might have speculated there was a t)elilah in the


       parish had he not known Miss K ilker's worth. Once when h
was scolding a frail incumbent who found it impossible t
raise money for the church debt the big woman came ragin
out and scourged him for his unkindness to the meek old man
who had more holiness in his big toe than His Lordship in his
whole lardy body. The Bishop thought it over and had to
agree. Besides, Miss Kilker was a fine co k
housekeeper.
Alf's diversions, as her brother called them, were catching.
They put everyone else on edge as well. In its own way, the
house was eerily affected. Handles came off saucepans, the
lavatory cistern developed a soprano wheeze, the cat got a
fishbone in its gullet. The troubled coming to the presbytery
for advice slipped on the steps and gave themselves something
worthwhile to fret about. The priest suspected Alf generated
some kind of malefic electricity.
Rowena had never met Alf, but she had heard plenty.
'Ah,' sighed her mistress, 'a man who falls over himself to
be kind to such a cranky old article of i
the saints.'
Rowena thought little of John's saintliness. He'd made a
few powerful grabs for her that made her believe otherwise.
She put the bargain squarely to John.
'If you offer up Dadda I'll offer up Alf.'
John thought that as fair as any man could wish. He chose
a time when Alf was not having a diversion, and took Eny to
the presbytery. Alf looked her over. Rowena had thought
that John's sister must be a bit of a crawthumper, going to
daily Mass and all. But when she summoned up enough
boldness to look into those small, deep-seeing eyes she knew
that whatever Alf did was an honest thing. Still, she remained
0 and economical
a s ster must be one of
42
1
4
'i
.1
f~
in awe of the woman. She was never truly at home with her.
Alf, for her part, had some misgivings. She could see that
Rowena was a warm, volatile girl, only touching the earth in
an odd place. Still, she liked her. She chided herself for the
jealousy she found in her heart, and stuck her head in the
scullery meat-safe for five minutes as a penance. She knew
she would probably be jealous of any girl who married her
brother.
So, shortly after her nineteenth birthday, when she had
been little more than a year away from her own country,
Rowena married John. She went into the marriage with the
strong intention of making a good thing of it. Before the


       ceremony she prayed that God would help her never to think
of Steve Tookey again. Though she was not in love with her
husband, she liked him; so it happened that only two or three
years passed before she realised she loved him dearly.
She had her father come from Sydney, and John did his
best with him. In the city Willie had spent too much time with
homesick Irishmen, and now proclaimed a sentimental
yearning for the country which had barely fed him. He
announced he was going to turn his face to the wall and die,
and John told him he could do that in the henhouse.
The older children recalled him as an old-fashioned
looking little man, with bunches of grey wool distributed
without rhyme or reason over his countenance, and a soft
cozening voice. The Kilker children grew up with this voice, a
Dublin voice, for Willie as well as John had been reared in the
capital. As he grew older he believed himself irresistible to
women, and informed everyone of their amorous advances.
'I'm ate alive with them,' he told the priest, who rather
enjoyed Willie's confessions.
43


       One day he said, looking frightened and excited, 'Me
belly's full of goss.'
They took him to the hospital, where he lowed and 
bellowed for a week or two, said 'I'm done', and died.
His funeral was a poor, scanty thing. He was buried on the
day of the old Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Though Trafalgar
declared a public holiday and hung out flags and ribbons, all
those citizens of Irish descent were away at the football field,
holding a protest meeting.
Rowena felt her father's death keenly. Her grief was not
the same as it had been with little May. She bewailed her
father's wasted, empty life.
'Ah, God, John,' she sighed, 'what's it all aboutT
John lay in his bed listening to this, Eny nestled on his
chest. Very content he was that Willie had gone to his long
rest. Many a time he could hardly stay his boot from giving
the old creature an urge in that direction.
'Didn't he give me you?' he murmured. 'If it hadn't been
for your poor Ma marrying Will Mullins you might have been
a Brady or Lenihan or any other one of them awful things.
And your hair nothing but donkey brown.'
Eny conceded the biological justice of this.
'Still,' she said dolefully, 'I can just see Dadda in heaven
this moment, criticising everything and complaining that St
Teresa put the hard word on him.'
'Ah, may the poor old coot be as happy as we are,' 
murmured John, putting Eny's hand where it would do the most
good.
So the years went on, and Eny had child after child, 
sometimes as easily as a cat and sometimes in mortal agony. By the
time Josie was born the older boys Dan and Emmet were 
work44
t
1
1
ing away from home, and never writing except, as was their
duty, at Easter. Delia had not yet flown the coop with that
married villain, and beloved Kathleen was still alive. After
Josie was born Eny lived with bated breath for a year or so.
She was sick to death of letting her skirts out and taking them
in.
At last she knew she was safe and she and John had a real
Christmas of a time. She used to sit in church listening to the
priest raving about the evils of birth control and the sorrow
of empty cradles and think he was off his head, and the Pope
with him.
Eny was a happy woman. It was true that now and again
her tongue shaved John's dignity too closely and he flung off
and got bawling drunk. He was none the worse for that and
neither was she.
So the year and the day came when the Darcy brothers


       returned to Trafalgar. They soaked in the pub bath, getting
rid of the stinks of greasy wool, sheep dip, cookhouse
fireplaces where the flames were fed half with wood and half
with the fat that drizzled from roasting mutton. Hugh's face
came up so rosy it was a picture. Jer's, being aquiline and
brown as a nut, was the more interesting, but girls didn't
think that.
The elderly maid awakened them with cups o
excitedly reminded them it was the King's Birthday holiday.
'We got a patriotic march and a merry-go-round and a
travelling show about a murder,' she boasted. 'Wasn't we all
cursing last night with the rain, but today's fine. Want me to
iron your good duds?'
The rain had thrown Trafalgar into distress.
f tea and
J
45
-i


       'Didn't I fear the worst,' said John Kilker, 'when I saw
them three kookaburras last night on the washhouse roof,
hoohooing like devils.'
Every important event in Trafalgar was held at the
Domain, a flat low-lying area to the west of Copenhagen
Creek. For many thousand years before white settlement it
had been the ritual battle ground of the blacks. Now it was
the football field, the showground. Political meetings were
held there, and once in a while it was a racecourse. It turned
green or brown in season and was often churned up like a
mud glacier, for the Copenhagen had a temperament like a
mad goat.
'She rose a trifle last night,' reported John. He had been
away at first light with the other organisers to see how things
were going. 'The tug o' war pitch is all skilly mud. We'll have
to move the mat nearer the bandstand. God willing, we'll
have a fine day.'
It was time for him to get into his Sunday clothes. His wife
watched from the bed, her expression enigmatic.
John hoped that Eny had finished surging at him. In his
starched white long-tailed shirt, socks and garters he stood at
the wash stand shaving, pulling a long lip as he nicked at the
hairs in his nose. He could see a bit of Rowena in his shaving
glass and his hopes fell.
Every year since his arrival in the town, John had attended
most public sports meetings. He had started off sprinting
when he was a youth, and then when he began to put on beef
he competed in the tug o' war and the hammer throw. The
cry 'Johnny Kilker does it again!' gave him such a kick, every
time. Once Eny had been proud of him, shouting
encouragement and glowering at folk who did the same thing
46
i
1
1
1
k
1
for other men. But now she considered him too old. Before
each King's Birthday he had to endure a week of strong
recrimination.
'You'll leave wife and children to mourn you, and all for
vanity!'
'I'm as good as 1 was when 1 was forty,' growled John.
'Good is it?' she scoffed. 'Look at the varicose veins on
you. You're within a prayer's distance of a wooden leg.'
'I've had enough from you, you battleaxe.'
'My Dadda had legs like a little white pigeon.'
'No wonder in that. He went the full of a lifetime without
doing a stroke of work.'
By this time he had donned his best black trousers with the


       scarlet braces which showed up so well when he formally
removed his coat for the sporting events.
'You're as contrary as a mule, John Kilker. 1 think that if 1
wept salt tears to persuade you to throw that great hammer
you'd refuse just to spite me.'
'If only you would, you thick-headed woman,' was what
John thought in his heart, for there was nothing he could do
about his contrariness. That was the way he was. But there
was no doubt he had sometimes felt a trifle light-headed of
late, and there was a heavy pounding in his ears when he put
his hand to the bigger ice blocks. But the sports events were a
test of manhood for him, in a way he felt Eny could never
understand.
His good humour returned; it was never away for long.
'Ah, Eny, one of these days I'll be an aged old fella, but
that isn't yet. Stop looking like Rent Day and we'll enjoy the
holiday with the girls, for who knows whether we'll have
another?'
47


       1
h~
'True for you,' said Eny lugubriously, looking so much
like a parson at a funeral that John burst out laughing. So,
after a moment, did she. He gave her a smacker, saying, 'You
knock spots off all the women I've ever seen. I wouldn't die
for fifty quid!'
His wife's fears for him were genuine. The thought of life
without John was a nightmare. But she was not one for
brooding, and jumped out of bed exhilarated by the holiday,
the band music, the murder. If there was one thing she liked
more than another it was a play, and this one had blood
enough in it to curdle your spit.
'Pip pip!' sang out Josie. Away she skimmed, sleek as a
bird in a green dress belted at the hips, her bobbed hair
hidden in a fashionable tea-cosy.
Eny could hear Margaret muttering and groaning.
'There's one in,' she heard her daughter say. Auntie Alf,
always with a few shillings to spare for her nieces, had bought
Margaret a pair of stays. Margaret knew very well Josie had
put her up to it, but she loved her aunt too much to protest.
'Don't be upset, dear,' Aunt Alf had advised. 'You'll get
used to them. We all need support for the burst. Your
clothes will hang better and you won't be embarrassed with
gentlemen staring.'
Margaret was mortified. Did people, let alone gentlemen,
stare? And why was that so bad? Josie had made her feel it
was coarse to have a big front, but Aunt Alf seemed to think
it sinful.
Made of pink coutil, stiffened with metal busks, the stays
had no space whatsoever for the female body as God
designed it.
'They're a cruel shape,' complained Margaret.
48
Eny squashed her into them. There she stood, her t
verted into a cushion hard as rock, with an unnatural
underneath.
,Was there ever such a Guy Fawkes?' she mourned.
Margaret had put up her hair the year before and
been falling down ever since. it was a turmoil of curl
\visps and 110 hairpin would hold it. It unravelled from
her new hat, a blue jelly mould with fluted ribbo
handles, as if it had life of its own. In the end she wo
flowered summer hat, with her hair spilling down her
tied with a ribbon.
1
f
Her mother gave her a hug. I'm off!' she said. 'And it's a
fine day after all, blessed be God.'  han early
The sky was the larkspur of summer rather t
a roaring heat, drying up the puddles


       NNinter. The sun sent out
on the Domain, letting the flags lighten and blow out with a
crack from their poles. The sunshine was so blinding on
Herbie's brass buttons, straps and tassels when Eny met him
at the door that she teased, 'Ah, wouldn't I like to pawn
you!'
He was baffled. But there was Margaret, ready to be 
escorted to the Domain. She greeted him nicely, though if she
had had a magic wand she would certainly have hit him with
it and turned him into almost anyone else. Margaret was not
officially walking out with Herbie Lennon but she always
found herself doing so. He could have been worse, being a
decent boy with buck teeth. He hated the Masons and was
active in the Hibernians. He was as bare of romance as an
egg, but what was Margaret to do? She was at the age when
life came at her like a bull charging. She knew what was
expected of her, to marry someone respectable, have a
49


       family, be a good Catholic, and not bother other people. She
was a daughter. A daughter became a wife. But how was she
to do that when only Herb Lennon showed signs of wanting
to wed her?
Herbie had been sweet on Margaret since they left school.
He had made up his mind to marry her and that was that.
Once or twice he had a desire to fling her to the ground and
teach her what it was all about. Shame had followed these
lustful thoughts. Soberly he confessed his sin, and listened
attentively to the priest's warning that he who looked upon a
woman with lust had done the same as committing adultery.
Father Driscoll thought this scandalously unfair, but Herb
quite saw the point of it. Anyway, would he wish to marry
Margaret if she permitted him to fling her to the ground and
teach her what it was all about? He believed not. He had no
idea that Margaret, warned against possible flinging by her
mother, had felt her stomach heave. This was not prompted
by virtue, though she was a virtuous girl, but by physical
aversion. Herb had woolly hair like kapok. For some reason
it turned her right off.
The young man had tried many times to propose to her.
The moment he got a certain throb in his voice Margaret
broke out in a sweat and made an excuse, however fatuous,
to escape. Something desperate inside her, unrecognised,
undefined, let out a screech of horror. Nothing, her desire to
be married, her mother's sensible advice to take him while he
was still warm, Josie's jibes, silenced that screech. Somehow
she knew that if Herbie proposed she wouldn't know how to
say no, and to marry Herbie would be to become someone
who was not herself.
For Herbie, in spite of his red bandsman's uniform, his
good manners, his devout Catholicism, was a great boy for
domination. Tirelessly he applied pressure. He was critical
and parental. t to wear those vulgar pink stockings,' he
11 prefer you no
said. 'Black is more ladylike.'
However, he cast a furtive glance of approval at
Margaret's bosom. He had never actually seen breasts since
he was weaned and was upset by the look of them. He much
preferred the cushion.
'They're not pink, they're flesh-coloured and all the rage,'
retorted Margaret tetchily. Herbie sighed. She was not in the
best of moods. Nevertheless, he intended to come to an
understanding with Margaret on this auspicious day. He
wished to be engaged. His job was steady, his morals
superior, his Mother willing if not enthusiastic, and he had
fifty pounds in the bank.
'Well, dear, away to the bandstand!' he said forgivingly.
Three bands were playing this King's Birthday. The
Salvation Army had made a bid to participate, but the
Council banished them to a corner of the Domain where they


       put up a marquee and dispersed rock cakes and cups of cocoa
to the indigent.
As Margaret stood amongst the happy crowd wondering
what to do next her sister sauntered past on the blazered arm
of Noel Capper.
Josie looked at Margaret's front, and mouthed, 'Oh, you
do look a screarn!'
Margaret tilted her chin, but she went off with a dart in her
heart, a desire to pull Josie's hat down over her eyes, or kick
her in her champagne-coloured shins. Well she knew she
looked a fright.
i
i


       52
'I won't be miserable, I won't,' she commanded herself.
Ahead was the twinkle, the red and gilt, of a 
merry-goround. Tragically she flung herself upon it and began to go
up and down, faster and faster.
Cruel, hurtful Josie! Why did she do it when she was so
lucky, able to become engaged to Noel whenever their fathers
gave permission? Margaret didn't care for Noel herself. He
had little weak eyes made into big weak eyes by glasses, and
he thought the world of himself. But still, he was already
Josie's. Margaret hated being alone when all the other girls
had boys with them; from her eminence she could see them
everywhere, strolling, laughing. Even when she was with a boy
it was only old Herb Lennon with his funny lip like a frill of
steak. She supposed that was because he played in a brass
band.
Still, even thinking about Herbie's lip made her feel
squeamish. With horror she realised she was squeamish. Her
unsophisticated ears and stomach were not used to going up
and down and round and round. She slipped off the dappled
horse; its teeth were like Herbie's. She sent up a prayer that
the machine should slow down, and it did, just as she saw
Hugh Darcy standing on the grass watching the 
merry-goround.
Hugh had no sooner emerged into the main street than
depression hit him. He'd been mad to come back to this hole.
He didn't even have Jer with him. Jer wanted to see their
mother's grave, and had gone off on his own. Hughie 
recalled that at Frances Darcy's funeral no one had cried but
young Jer. He had sobbed and gasped until he had been led
away to be cleaned up and comforted.
No one had thought to comfort the elder son but
f
t
Nirs Kilker. She had the reputation of being a hard lady, but
slie'd come over and said some kindly things to the big yahoo
he'd been then, morose, hands shoved in trouser pockets. He
had been so embarrassed he could have punched her face in.
Hugh had never come to terms with the cruel mutilation of
his mother's death, as Jeremiah had. His grief was never
expressed, never admitted. Coming back to Trafalgar
brought it perilously close to the top of his mind. He was
tense with anger, both at himself and his mother, for
different reasons.
He stood there watching the merry-go-round, wondering if
pubs opened on public holidays, when this soft thing fell into
his arms. Actually she was a fair-sized girl; they collapsed
together on the grass. But he had this feeling of softness, as if
a pigeon had hit him in the chest. She was nowhere near as
pretty as some of the girls he'd known, but there was 
something about her that told him he'd better look after her. Now


       she sat up in a flurry of skirt, pulling it down over her shiny
stockinged knees, white as a bone, speechless.
'Did you fall off? Are you hurt anywhereT
'Don't speak to me,' she gasped. 'I'm going to throw up.'
'Sit still. You'll be right as rain in a minute.'
In a moment this was so. Colour came back in her face; it
was almost as brilliant as his own. She had a nose within an
ace of being a saddle, blue eyes amid a lot of lashes and
tobacco-coloured hair. The very image of a country mug, a
real bunny.
'You with anyone?' he asked.
'No,' said Margaret, feverish with excitement. To meet
Hughie Darcy this way! He didn't know who she was, let
alone the things she'd dreamt about him. She was in torment
5


       from the stays, her stomach was still uneasy, in a moment or
two she'd be dying to go to the lav. But oh, the bliss!
Hugh could see she was knocked out by him. The way she
blushed, lost her breath, fiddled with her hair! Indulgently, a
conqueror, he introduced himself.
'I know,' she said. 'We used to go to the same school, ages
ago that was. I'm Margaret Kilker. Gee, I like your
moustache.'
'Want to see the show?' he asked carelessly. Margaret
squealed as if he'd pinched her.
10h, Lord,' she cried. 'I'm not allowed, but I'll die if
don't see it!'
Eny herself would not have missed a play for a guinea, but
she maintained that the theatre heated girls' blood. John
backed her in this; he knew that most travelling showmen
were rough as bags. And the plays were a lot of trash, blood
and thunder. But, like Eny, that was what Margaret yearned
for, thrills, frights-, handsome men and loud posh voices. It
was wonderful how flexible her conscience had become in the
few minutes since she met Hugh Darcy, for she did not
hesitate.
The formless, protective feeling had left Hughie's 
consciousness and was forgotten. The girl was as silly as a turkey.
'Come on then,' he said. 'My word, you've got pretty
hair.'
She floated off with him. The band made heavenly music.
The sideshow barkers had voices like silver trumpets. The
clash of the Salvation lassies' tambourines far, far away was
like bells.
'Ah, bugger it all,' thought Hughie, shutting his mouth on
A
1
4
the words. He had seen Jeremiah, and Jer had seen him.
,lt,s my young brother,' he said sulkily to Margaret. Jer
swung towards them, full of pleasure and welcome.
'I remember now,' said Margaret. 'The little cripple boy.'
She tried to smile, to be agreeable, but she could hardly
keep her eyes off Jer's bare feet, they were so blackish, thin,
and shaped like walking-stick handles. Their strangeness
made Margaret ill at ease; she longed for him to go off on his
own.
But Jer stuck with them like a burr. No sideways glances or
scorching words from the corner of his brother's mouth
shook him. Margaret could have cried. She wanted with all
her might to be alone with Hugh. But how could she let the
poor boy see that? She smiled and chatted with him, shared
with him the fluff of spun sugar Hugh bought her.
At last Hugh took Jer aside and gave him three shillings to
keep out of their way.
'Don't you cotton on, you silly bastard? I might be on to a


       good thing there.'
'Five bob and you tell me all about how she was,'
bargained Jer.
'Shove it.'
'Well, then,' said Jer. He won, as he always did, and
moved away laboriously, hoping Margaret was watching him
and feeling bad. He was excited. Now he could see the
travelling show. If he looked pathetic enough the showman
might let him in for half fare.
Margaret could have wept happy tears. Hugh's relief made
him blithely reckless. He wanted to show off. Soon her arms
were full of rubbish, dolls on sticks, a coconut, paper roses
55


       and two balloons. The girl was drunk with pleasure. She
heard cheering from the cricket pitch, where the tug o' war
contestants had taken up their stand, and did not remember
that her father was in one of the teams and she was supposed
to barrack.
She longed for Josie to see her. She looked around proudly,
nodding to those she knew, until her eyes alighted on her
erstwhile escort Herbie.
Herbie had come off duty, deafened by Strauss and
Sousa, his checks cramped and his lungs dry as flannel. He
sharply refused beer, supplied free to the bandsmen, and
strode about looking for Margaret. He was irritated not to
find her waiting for him beside the bandstand, and more so to
espy her arm in arm with a Valentino in a cream waistcoat
with showy buttons. Herb was more puzzled than disturbed.
His strongest reaction was to the stranger's waistcoat,
common in the extreme. Margaret did not look like herself,
her cheeks were crimson, that unruly hair had sprung out of
its ribbon. When she introduced the two young men she
tittered like a flapper.
, It's almost lunch time,' Herb coldly informed her,
ex ending his crooked arm.
'I don't want to have lunch,' blurted Margaret. 'I've made
other plans, I've changed my mind.'
She looked as if she might cry, her eyes glistening, her
lip tremulous. Herb was so taken aback he broke into
expostulations.
, Stop right there, sport,' said Hugh. 'You heard the young
lady.'
The girl now became frightened and stammered:
A
41
-4
,I just don't feel like it, don't you see? Oh, stop bothering
me about it. I can - do as I like!'  ig disapproving
All she wanted was for Herbie to take his b
face away.
-you don't own me!' she cried, almost in tears.
,Nlove on, fella,' said Hugh. Herbie now noticed he had
big fists and a thickening over one eye that looked as if he
were often in scraps.
'Certainly, Margaret, if that's what you want. I daresay
you have some reason for behaving like this.'
He put on his braided cap and moved away with dignity.
He was more disturbed than angry. How pretty she had
looked! He had a rare pang of desire for Margaret. That
yob! That larrikin! She didn't know him; Herbie was
acquainted with all Margaret's friends. To think that she
would jib at doing something they had agreed to do' It was
inexplicable.
'if we hurry we'll make the second show,' said Hugh. He


       gave her a squeeze.
Hugh knew the phenomenal effect of theatrical 
presentations, however crude, upon rustic people. lie was
not beyond it himself; sometimes he and Jer talked for days
on end about some melodrama they had seen. Men said that
girls got so highly strung they scarcely knew what they were
doing, The show was as effective as a travelling revival
mission, always blamed for a crop of illegitimate children in
the district. Certainly Margaret was giddy with excitement.
'I'm shaking like a leaf,' she whispered, 'and it hasn't even
started!'
I In the twilit dusty tent every seat was filled. Suddenly a
56


       lemon ray shone upon the curtain, painted with a castle and a
snow peak. Behind Margaret and Hugh arose an animal bray
of pleasure from the sweaty mob shoving and trampling one
another in the Standing Room Only area.
Meanwhile Hugh had spotted Jer, his insatiable stare upon
him and the girl. Outrage boiled in Hugh. He shuddered all
over. Margaret thought it was with passion. He kissed her
cannibalistically, ignoring catcalls and cheers.
'Bloody JeW he thought despairingly as the curtain
cranked aside. Margaret fell against him as if her backbone
had gone. She felt things she had never felt before.
Having arrived late, Eny stood amongst the rabble in flat
hats and flared pants at the rear. When she spied her
daughter in the audience she was irate enough, but when she
saw the young man with Margaret give her a kiss you
wouldn't see out of a bedroom she uttered a yelp.
'What's the matter, MaT asked the flat hat beside her.
'JealousT
She lamed him with her sharp-heeled shoe, glaring all the
time at the miscreant in front of her. Such misgivings she
had when she saw it was not Herbie Lennon but a stranger!
'If God spares me I'll scorch her to the ground,' she said ,
adding to the whinger beside her, 'Ah, shut your trap and
watch the play!' She made up her mind she would catch
Margaret and the villain she was with outside the tent. She
then put them both out of her head.
There was an actor up there in the ruby murk who had
once been good. Never did he speak his fatuous lines without
being aware of the mental tumult of the audience. They were
riveted by melodrama. He could see their eyes, glassy red as
those of animals caught in the glare of headlights. As he slew
the victim in the barn he was almost wafted upwards by a vast
1
1
1
rnoan, as though he had murdered them all.
Margaret's head swam.
,it's awful, awful!' she moaned in an ecstasy of enjoyment,
and hid her face on Hugh's sleeve. He had seen 'Murder in
the Red Barn' twice before: it was a standby of the travelling
shows; yet he too could not take his eyes from the stage.
He intended to take Margaret down to the casuarina groves
beside the creek before the spell of the play wore off. He stole
a sideways glance at her. She looked bemused enough for
anything. Somehow he must avoid Jer.
The moment the curtain fell and the pianist began to slam
out 'God Save the King' Hugh grabbed Margaret's hand and
bolted for the side entrance. Emerging into the horrid
whiteness of day both of them felt grumpy, up in the air,
half-sick.
Jer had thought fastest. Jer was waiting, teetering on his


       crutches, pathetic lonely little fellow.
'Stop haunting me, you bastard!' Hugh said savagely, 
seizing his brother by the shirt. Jer fell skilfully off his crutches.
'Come on!' commanded Hugh. Dragging Margaret by the
hand, he whisked behind a sideshow. Water gurgled from a
tank: there was a querulous mutter from the unseen 
audience.
'You shouldn't have shaken him,' remonstrated Margaret.
'Him a cripple and everything.'
'I've had my full of him following me around,' said Hugh.
'Bloody gooseberry.' He turned a melting look on her and
said humbly. 'Didn't mean to swear. it's just that I want me
and you to be alone.'
Margaret swallowed it all. Blushes came and went; she
squeezed Hugh's hand.
'Can you spot him anywhere?'


       a
Margaret peeped out. She did not see Jer, but she instantly
observed her mother, standing to one side of the emerging
crowd, looking like thunder.
'Oh, Lord, Hughie, there's Ma! Someone must have told
her I went to the play! She'll slaughter me, she will, honest.'
The girl was so alarmed Hugh saw that indeed Mrs Kilker
would murder her, or something very close.
Hughie pondered. As he did so three mermaids waddled
past them, their blue feet sticking out between tail flukes,
their sequinned costumes held up in dripping ruckled folds.
They were bulky girls, aggrieved and cold. Hugh and
Margaret fell in at the far side of them.
'Whatever happened to you, beautifulT he asked 
sympathetically of the nearest.
'Some rotten swine took the plug out of the tank,' she
chattered. Hugh put on a face of dismay and condolence,
pushing Margaret along in their shelter. At their dressing tent
he left them and, with Margaret, made a dash for the House
of Horror.
'Can you see your Mum anywhereT
'No. But I can see Jer.'
'Never mind him, he won't have any money left.'
Hugh and Margaret ran through the yawning entrance and
found themselves in darkness.
Not far behind them Mrs Kilker snatched her ticket from
the box, shoved through the turnstile and the creaking door.
She was immediately assailed by a skeleton. Blue light shone,
the thing's hollow jaws chomped at her, and she let out a
whoop like a steam whistle. She floundered around, 
intending to go out where she had come in, and bumped into
something with long arms like a wooden octopus.
60
1
1
i
together, and wer
The pair of them fell over  c borne on a
travelling platform through a dark hideous hell.
The ticket seller had made a gallant effort to prevent Jer
entering the House of Horror. He had visions of a crutch
getting stuck in the mechanism and the whole thing cranking
to a halt. But Jer smartly cracked him across the shin, and
shot up the ramp with the agility of a mosquito. The ticket
seller heard the shrieks and hoped if anyone was dying in
there it was the hoppy.
The travelling platform was made of circular plates that
glided back and forth across each other. Eny scrambled at
last to her feet. Lightning flashed, and she was whirled
around to find a dark devilish face looking up at her from the
level of her knees.


       'I've lost me crutches, I've lost 'em,' moaned this face. The
pair of them went around together for a moment, yelling,
then night fell and a velvet spider as big as a puppy dropped
on Eny's hat.
'I found one!' said the phantom voice gladly. Eny shrieked
her head off. Some distance away she could hear Margaret
doing the same thing, but the girl was big enough to look
after herself. Eny's spider jerked away into the roof, the side
of the tunnel lit up fierily, and she saw a man hanging by the
neck with his tongue out like a bit of red flannel. She fell back
against Jer, who had now recovered the other crutch and
teetered precariously on a moving plate. Eny saw he was a
live boy.
'I thought you was a ghost too" she confessed.
Jer did not recognise Mrs Kilker, she was just an old 
squealing lady. But something about his twisted legs was familiar to
her.
4(
A1


       Before she could ask a question, a phosphorescent shape,
somewhat after the style of a human form, swept up the dark
tunnel and enveloped them both. Jer struck out with a
crutch. Eny clutched the wall, where a vast hanging
spiderweb netted her. She might well have stayed there for
ever, but the platform carried her, lurching and staggering,
through ghastly blue light and worse green, past dim caves
where monsters threatened, and finally precipitated both her
and Jer into a dull cloudy afternoon.
'I'm that nervous I could jump the height of a tree,' she
confessed to the boy. 'My hair is standing on end!' 
Embarrassed, he scuttled away, touching his cap and murmuring
goodbye. She had him now. He was the little boy who cried so
much at poor Mrs Darcy's funeral. Eny looked about for
Margaret and her escort, but there was no sign of them. Only
of Josie, dishevelled and breathless, half in tears.
'I've been looking for you everywhere,' she cried. 'Pa's
taken a queer turn. They've fetched the doctor.'
As for Jeremiah, he found his brother and Margaret in no
time at all, eating buttered saveloys on the steps of a caravan.
They stared at him guiltily. Jer beamed. But the House of
Horror had unnerved Hugh; he was beginning to wonder if
Margaret was worth the trouble.
'Get away from us, will you? You're like a flaming sticking
plaster. Clear out. I mean it. I'll see you back at the pub.'
Jer put on a heartbreaking expression and Margaret was
ashamed.
'Well, course I will, Hughie. I didn't know I was in the
way. I'll go and spend some time with the Salvation Army;
they're real nice people.'
He moved away, hanging his head. Hugh's blood ran cold.
A
62
1
Always Jer managed to get him by the short hairs. All desire
ft him - He had to get to the Army's tent before
for the girl le
his brother started repenting.
A smart little girl hurried up to Margaret. She gasped out:
'Where have you been9 I've looked and looked all over the
place, Pa's awfully sick, you've got to come.'
Hugh blessed the good fortune that enabled him to get shot
of the girl. 'You 90 Off to your Dad. Go on, I want you to.
Tell you what, we'll meet later, by the suspension bridge.
About five.'
Josie ran him over with her clever eyes, summed him up as
a bush lair and took her sister away to the St John's'
Ambulance station.
Strange things had happened to John Kilker. He went
through the tug o' war as easy as a bird. He knew that the
younger men took the strain; all he had to do was to allow his


       vast weight to connect with the earth. He had sailed through
the event without a problem.
'I'm not even breathing hard,' he pointed out to Eny.
There were terrible depths of frivolity in his wife that even
now almost brought a joke to her lips, but she said. 'Your
face is such a colour, John. Black as the ace of spades. I'm
asking you not to throw the hammer, John.'
But he went off defiantly and, when the time came, took
the great weight, felt his muscles crack, whirled, and let go.
He sensed the hammer fly away, the world was speckled red,
he felt light and floating, and knew he was still alive and
Johnny Kilker. He opened his eyes and saw the doctor and his
wife with their heads together above him. The pain in his
chest was so great he could spare no time for them. It was a
fearful cramp. He could hardly breathe. The doctor raised his
A


       64
head a little, and he was sick over the man's good suit. He
was a little better then, whispering, 'Ah, God, doctor, I've
destroyed you!'
Eny was not crying, but he had never seen such a face of
terror.
'How do you feel, John?'
He pondered a little. 'I feel all right.'
This was so. John had a great sense of his body; it had
laboured willingly for him, given him joy and pleasure. Now
he could feel it trying to steady itself, settle back on an even
keel, get the blood flowing soft and smooth and the heart
ticking at the right pace.
'I'll just have a bit of a spell,' he said.
'That beer upset me,' he apologised to the doctor.
'Shouldn't have guttled it down right after the tug o' war.'
'That's probably what happened,' agreed the doctor. He
thought what a sad thing it was that nothing could be done
for heart attacks except leading the life of a turnip.
'It'll kill old John,' he thought, 'just as it would kill me.'
He was a good man, the doctor, deeply rooted in the 
complex life of that small town. He had known John for ever. He
thought of the way people said, 'The kettle's always on the
boil at Kilker's,' and wondered what would happen now.
Robustly he reassured the frightened Eny, said he would
call at the house in an hour, and left John to the ambulance
of ficers.
Margaret and Josie stood to one side crying. Margaret
blubbered heartily, finding relief in her tears. Josie's might
have wetted one corner of her handkerchief; all the others ran ~b(
down inside like drops of acid.
1
k
0
'She's got cement for a heart, that one,' thought her
mother.
Josie suffered for her father far more deeply than
Margaret. If he had died! If there had been no more Pa in the
house!
Noel tried to comfort her but she dismissed him, saying she
wished to go home alone. In truth she was distracted by a
premonition of eventual loss, and did not know how to cope
with it.
At home, Margaret fussed over her mother, bringing her
brandy, tea, and simple comfort. Josie sat for long gazing
into the face of her sleeping father, the strong, immortal
rooftree of the house. If she had been a 4religious girl she
would have prayed. As it was, she tried to transfer her
immense vitality to him so that he should be as he was before.
Mrs Kilker felt the worse because she had slipped away
before the hammer throw, and all for a murder play. She


       confessed to Margaret, and Margaret confessed to her, and
they both felt the better for it.
Before five o'clock Margaret returned to the Domain. The
King's Birthday was over, the tents and caravans gone, the
merry-go-round dismantled. The Domain was dirty, the
damp ground trampled into muck. The Boy Scouts ran
around picking up bottles and papers.
A chill wind blew from the south, bustling the swans on
their homeward flight. They were so high the light from the
vanished sun picked them out like a trail of sparks. Their
sombre voices struck an echo from Margaret's heart, for
already she was certain Hugh Darcy would not come.
Though the suspension bridge over the creek was condemned


       4
it was still used. Its planking was coated with dense yellow
clay from the last flood, the supporting wire ropes rusty and
split. It had been a great place for dares in their schooldays.
He who crossed the creek on the outside of the bridge, hand
over hand along the rail, was a hero, in the school idiom a
bottler. Hugh Darcy had done it with his little brother
clinging to his back. He was a double bottler. Margaret
looked over the rail now, at the inch of plank which had
supported the boy's toes. He had been a brave youngster, and
was probably braver now.
Standing there, gazing into the darkening water, she found
every excuse for his not keeping faith. She was clumsy, too
fat, her bust had turned into a pillow, she shouldn't have
worn her hair down her back like a school child. She waited
till she heard the Angelus faintly ring in the convent on the
other side of town. It was six, too late to wait any longer. She
went home through the dusk, feeling upset about her father
but more upset about Hugh.
'You're well out of it,' said her sister a day later. 'That
brother of his, the lame one, got up at the Salvation Army
rally and shouted out he was saved.'
'Maybe he is,' said Margaret.
'Yes, but you should have heard what he repented of,' said
Josie gleefully. 'It's all over town. He and his brother, they're
just wasters. Your fellow drinks like a fish. He gets into
fights, too.'
'Don't call him my fellow,' said Margaret angrily.
'And he's got girls everywhere, they say.'
'So whaff
'Then Hugh came and hauled his brother away. He
smacked his head for him, too. The Sally major said
66
he oughtn't to, an d Hugh said he'd smack his for him
as "cll.'
I What's it got to do with me?' yelled Margaret. She caught
her sister a stinger on the ear. She began to sob: 'Anyway,
he's a double bottler.'
Eny thought nothing of the blow; young Josie had got
down on her knees and begged for it. But she, too, had
heard the talk around town. Also now she recalled Hugh
Darcy at his mother's funeral, dark, glowering, a wild goose
of a boy. God be between him and my Margaret, she
thought.
'It's no use your dreaming about that one,' she told her
daughter. 'He's got flighty feet. You'll not see hide nor hair
11
of him again.'
'I know,' said Margaret, continuing to weep.
Eny could have slapped her for letting Josie guess her
feelings. Josie was still holding her scarlet ear, but smiling all


       the same.
'Don't stand there gawking,' the mother said sharply. 'Go
A
and take a look at your father.'
'Even now,' thought Josie, 'with Pa so sick, she's thinking
of Margaret.'
But Eny was not consciously thinking. She was feeling
~~,,hat she had felt many times before, that her girl needed
placidity, kindness, no hullabaloo such as she herself revelled
in. She thought Herbie as dull as dead flies; she wouldn't give
tuppence for him; but he was fond of Margaret and he was
the sort of man who would look after a wife and children. No
wild boy ever looked after anything, let alone a wife.
She forgot her daughters, and went to sit beside her
husband.


       Jer had humbly begged his brother's pardon. He said he
couldn't stand a bar of Trafalgar, and asked wretchedly if
they could leave. Hugh knew that, for once, he was telling the
truth.
He wanted to have a few words with old Mr Kilker, find
out how he was. The old joker had been a trump taking care
of the father's funeral and all. But he did not want to meet
Margaret again. There was something about her that worried
i
him.
'Sure we'll clear out,' he agreed. 'Bloody hole in the hills.
Who'd want to live here unless he had a slate loose?'
He could not think why he had wanted to come, unless it
was to make things different in some way.
'What say we clear out for Sydney?'
This was the way all their quarrels concluded, with a
turning of their thoughts towards the dreamland with its
spires and big clocks as wide as two men turned endways, and
whips of work for willing boys.
'That bridge that opens in the middle.'
'I never could work that out. Maybe Mum had it wrong.'
Hugh felt a renewed passion of protectiveness towards Jer.
It was love, although he did not recognise it.
Jeremiah saw it at once. Happiness made him sentimental
and warm.
He took his guitar and began to sing: 'Meet me tonight in
dreamland, Under the silvery moon . . . .'
After a time the elderly maid knocked. She said shyly,
'Boss says he'd take it kindly if you boys came down to the
kitchen and gave us a tune. We got a cup of tea on.'
The landlord was a fanatic Irishman who had never seen
Ireland Reared on an isolated selection by emigrant parents,
-1
he spoke as pure a tongue as was ever heard in Monaghan.
From his point of view Australia was a small piece of Ireland
itself, a bit of acreage that had slipped its moorings. During
the Troubles of 1917 he had gone to jail for confronting a
policeman in Pitt Street, Sydney, and flattening him merely
because he wore a helmet.
He had the reputation of such hardness that a nail couldn't
be driven into him with a six-pound hammer. But Jer soon
had him pulling a long lip and pretending he had cigarette ash
in his eye. He did it with Stephen Foster songs.
The landlord said gruffly, 'The wife died on me last year
and it's leaned upon me.'
'God rest her blessed soul,' said Jer, 'as for certain He
will.'
The maids gushed he'd make a fortune on the vaudeville,
he was that soft and lovely with the songs.
'Ah, I'm nothing at all,' said Jer modestly. He let them
know that all he wanted in the world was to get his two feet


       turned round the right way.
'There's operations,' he said. 'Marvellous things them
doctors can do. But ah, it takes money.'
The landlord was back to normal the next morning. Still,
he waived half the bill, and he gave Jer an envelope with a
pound note in it from the girls. Privately he said to Hugh,
'That brother of yours is a bit of caffler. But to be sure, he's a
nice one.'
Hughie knew that a caffler was a cunning little fellow who
got around people with his tongue. He thought yeah, that's
Jer all right. But he's a nice one.


       The year went by, a hard winter with frost so severe the
main street had to be covered with sawdust to keep the horses
from breaking their legs. The spring was noisy with floods,
the Domain a sheet of brown water with the trees standing
like islands. But the old naval officer who settled Trafalgar
had chosen well. By early summer the feed was thick on the
hills, fruit setting in the many orchards, stock looking
prosperous. If a sudden wind shook a tree the air was, for a
moment, full of butterflies.
John Kilker was depressed for a while. It was the way he
was when Martin Darcy died, not speaking, grey and 
shambling. Eny didn't know what to do to shake him out of it. But
gradually he recovered his strength. The sun and warmth
helped him; he was able to look at his bed-shrunken arms and
legs and think that soon they would be back to what they
should be. He leant heavily on his wife, though he did not
realise it. When he saw her haggard with anxiety he was
sorry, but humbly glad too, to know she loved him so dearly.
He thought he might turn to religion. He was a Catholic, of
course; he would have knocked down any villain who said he
70
1
three :
f
1
wasn't. He had always dutifully done what the Church told
him to do, but to be honest he didn't know the why or
wherefore of much of it. Eny herself was Catholic to her
marrow. She was hung all over with medals and scapulars.
She got Father Driscoll down to see John. John listened to
him wit
h anxious intent. Oh, he was a dextrous man with the
words, John thought. He could see the holy Faith was a
ladder all right, but could not see where it would take him.
He didn't want heaven. He wanted the simple contentment of
earth, and his family around him.
, You pray for me, lovie,' he said to his wife. 'I can't seem
to get the hang of it.'
He was very pleased to have two postcards from young
Hugh Darcy, hoping he was feeling better and thanking him
for his goodness in looking after the Dad's funeral.
'He's a decent lad,' he said. 'And I daresay that 
lollylegged brother is too.'
One postcard had a photograph of a bore windmill, and
the other a picture of the railway station at Moree where the
brothers were working. Margaret studied both pictures but
there was not a thing she could read into them. Josie teased

her'What, not a word to you? He probably can't remember
what you look like.'
But at Christmas Margaret received a card all to herself.


       On the reverse was written: 'Jer and me wish you the very
best. Now at Wales Flat cutting prickly pear, stinking job.
Got a bike now. Jer rides pillion. Like to have a line from
you. Love.'
'You needn't think that "love" means anything,' pointed
out Josic. 'Anyway, he's got no business putting it on the


       4
card where everyone can read it. Especially when you hardly
know him. Cheek!' The teasing went over Margaret's head.
She was so happy that Hugh had not forgotten her. She put
the card in her prayerbook. She longed to write to him
immediately but by the time she had thought what to say a
month had gone by.
What she wanted to say was too forward, what she could
say was dumb and boring, about the prickly pear and what
was Wales Flat like, and her father on his feet again and
talking about going back to work. She expected never to hear
from Hugh again.
Eny raised a din about John's going back to work.
'Don't barge at me,' he said, 'there's the grand girl. I can
feel me joints seizing up. Besides the manager's putting me on
light jobs. A child could manage it.'
Eny wasn't giving up. She asked the doctor's advice.
'Don't try to stop him,' he said. He took her hand. He
knew very well how she felt. 'That old pump may last another
ten years. Even more. Don't make a sick man of him; it won't
help. You must have the guts to let him live as he pleases.'
'I haven't,' cried Eny, anguished.
'You'll find them. Don't show the whites of your eyes at
me, woman. You go home and think over what I've said.'
But Eny was showing the whites of her eyes at fate that had
struck down her man and brought the fear of death into their
house and bed. It was there all right. John looked fine; the
loss of weight made her remember the fine contours of his
face when young. His eyes were sharp and his step swift. But
the thought of death was always with her, a sorrow, a painful
fear. Nevertheless she did, as the doctor had foretold, find
the fortitude, bared to the bone, never to fuss or cosset, to
~jc
4
support him in all he did. In bed she had become the lover;
her skill saved him exertion where she thought it perilous; she
turned their impetuous passion into something slow and 
mellow. Did John notice? She did not know. There was between
them, she felt, a web of loving lies, a conspiracy to make the
best of whatever was left to them.
'I'll fight you for him, God,' she thought. 'Every inch of
the way.'
Hugh was surprised at how tickled he was when he received
Margaret's letter. To get away from the others he put it in his
pocket and went out into the empty blaze to pot a few rabbits
for the cookhouse. Sitting on a stump, the rifle across his
knees, he read her girlish lines and thought what a gentle,
simple thing she was. The sort of girl that life would 
unfailingly knock around. His mother had been like that. She had
been educated sufficiently to become a governess, and had
been treated like a family member on that distant property.


       What made her leave that pleasant existence and live such an
abominable life in the shack beside the Aboukir? She must
have loved Martin, but Martin did not seem to love her. If he
had, there might still have been a home for Jer and himself to
return to now and again. Hughie did not often wish for a
home, not even when sheds cut out and he saw the men gladly
hastening off on horses, or driving traps or old cars. It was
Margaret who made him think of one now, for it was
impossible to separate her from the warm family life that
plainly was hers.
Sad bewilderment filled him at the thought of his mother,
dancing in her cherry blouse, skeletal and mad.
As he returned to the camp one of the rouseabouts, 
scrub73


       j~.
bing his dirty clothes in the creek, called out, 'Hear you
cracked it with a stunner at Trafalgar.' Hugh nodded. Jer
had been at work. Still, he was not displeased.
'Had a letter from her today. Burnt holes in the pages,' he
said. He put on a sly grin and refused to respond to the 
goodnatured chiacking over supper. Jer, emboldened by his
brother's acquiescence, changed Mrs Kilker into a hot little
cow of sixteen, and pruriently described their experiences in
the House of Horror.
Hugh wrote to Margaret. He described how he had read
her letter on the edge of the grotesque green army of prickly
pear that marched down from the north, taller than he, 
impregnable, all queer arms and heads like monsters. He said he
had taken the bunnies home and stewed them in milk, with
bacon and onions. The men had thought him a snitcher cook.
Slowly their brief stiff letters became real communication.
Hugh looked forward to hearing from her, and if the store
truck brought nothing for him he felt cheated and 
eviltempered. He had realised that, free and all as he was, there
was no one else in the world, except for Jer, who would write
him a letter.
Margaret's heart jumped when she saw Hugh's writing on
an envelope. Joy made her tremble.
'Oh, Lord, I'm a goner all right,' she thought. She prayed
about it: 'Holy Mary, let me have Hughie Darcy, and I'll try
to be such a good wife. I don't know why I love him, but I
want to be with him all the time. Didn't you feel like that
about St Joseph?'
She \vas a girl of quixotic faith. It gave her an artless grace.
She went about the house singing, and Eny, observing, shook
74
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her head. She had done a deal of singing herself when she
first met Steve Tookey, and then again, a year or so after she
wed, Nvhen she looked at John and knew he was the treasure
of her life.
After a period of the huff, Herbie Lennon began once
again to call upon Margaret. She looked on his reliable
countenance despairingly. If only he'd been a wag! If only he
had a bit of the devil in him! He was so worthy and 
respectable. How could she hurt his feelings by telling him to push
off, as her mother had advised her to do if she honestly could
not stand a bar of him. At the same time, her mother had let
her know that if she followed this advice she'd be the fool of
the world.
All she could bring herself to was a sulky mutter: 'I don't
want to get serious.'
But nothing knocked him back; he knew what an excellent
catch he was. He put her reluctance down to maidenly 
mod

       esty and liked her all the better. But Margaret was greatly
confused. Perhaps Herb really would make a good husband
and she would learn to love him, as Josie said. Josie!
Margaret's thoughts flew to her sister. If Josie championed
Herb Lennon it would not be for any kind reason.
This emboldened her. When Eny gave her a talking-to
about writing to Hugh Darcy - making it plain that
Margaret's head was so full of romantic ideas there was little
room for anything else, and that she'd better realise that
Herb Lennon could traipse off any time he chose - the girl
answered testily.
'Don't I write to Hugh only because he has no family of his
75


       own except poor Jer?' she retorted. 'And if you want to
know, the boys are to be home in Trafalgar for the Icemen's
Picnic, and I think it would be the charitable thing to ask
them to have their dinner with us that day.'
Eny was not fooled by her daughter's bold demeanour, but
she put the anxiety aside. There were other things to think of.
Josie passed her eighteenth birthday and Noel Capper
asked her father if they could become engaged. John 
experienced the sudden indignation of any father asked for
his daughter's hand by a watery-eyed stripling.
He thought Josie still a child. He remembered her, scrawny
and shivering like an unfledged bird, sitting on the gatepost
to welcome him when he came home from work. Look at the
size of her, he thought, them straight up and down hips. He
did not let his mind stray as far as the improper thought of
Josie getting pregnant; he kept it tethered to the idea that up
and down hips were not a good thing for a married lady.
But Josie did not want to get married. Josie wanted a long
engagement.
'It's so romantic,' she told Margaret, 'and I can plan
everything to the last detail. The wedding will be on Noel's
twenty-sixth birthday.'
Josie easily passed the first accountancy examinations and
Noel made further application to her father. He pointed out
that they were both very level-headed. Reluctantly, then,
John gave his permission for the engagement.
Margaret was pleased for her sister, though the thought of
Noel in an intimate situation gave her the sicks. Yet she was
envious too, finding it hard to keep a smiling face when
friends commiserated with her about her little sister's wiping
her eye. Rowena thought the whole situation unnatural.
76
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k
, I could no sooner have been engaged to you for years than
fly,' she confessed to John. 'Either I would have gone off
with someone else or we would have had three christenings
before the wedding bells.'
John was more prudish than she, but he agreed that might
well have been the case.
'Still, not everyone's a gladiator like you, lovie,' he
whispered.
Eny purnmelled him, cherishing him body and soul and
anything else left over.
About this time Aunt Alf received a letter from Delia. No
one had had a word from Delia since the Great War, when


       she cleared off with that stock agent who had a wife and four
children and sang tenor in the choir. John and Rowena did
not speak of her except to each other. Their hearts were still
sore over that girl.
Delia had been a plump little thing with a round pearly face
and downy hair. There was no teaching her anything; what
Delia wanted to do she did. She scarcely knew there were
people outside of herself. They were all there to support,
serve, pleasure Delia. Auntie Alf, who loved her, said she
would settle down as she grew. But that did not happen. At
ten years old Delia had no eyes for anyone but boys; as far as
anything in trousers was concerned she was as single-minded
as a tomcat. In her sleepy eyes there was a flicker that
fascinated most but gave others the creeps.
By the time she was eleven fathers were coming round to
John and barking: 'Keep that damned fool of a girl of yours
away from my Colin, Frank or Bert, or you and me'll mix it.'
John and Eny were mortified and greatly anxious. John
was for ever out looking for Delia, home late from dances,


       dress torn, green grass stains, but bold-eyed just the same.
She was in and out of work, cheeky to customers, hand in the
till, passionate scenes with the boss, often slapped stupid by
the boss's wife.
When she ran off she left a note for her parents whom she
loved in her own way.
'I want to experience real life,' she wrote, 'and there isn't
any in this burg.'
Eny recognised it as a caption from a motion picture she
and the children had seen.
They heard no further news. Delia could have been alive or
dead. If asked, Eny might have said bitter words about this
delinquent daughter, but she never failed to pray for her.
When she saw the signature on the letter Alf experienced
joy and gratitude. She had made up her mind that Delia had
succumbed to the Spanish influenza. What happiness the
news would bring to John and Rowena!
But Delia asked her to keep the letter a secret; she wanted
to cause no more grief to her family. She was in a bad way,
worn down by suffering and misfortune. The stock agent had
abandoned her soon after they reached Sydney; she had lost
her health and gone from bad to worse. Delia blamed it all on
her own wicked foolishness. She hadn't known when she was
well off. She humbly asked Auntie Alf to forgive her, but
said she would never forgive herself. She was now in abject
poverty, deserted by her husband but hoping to get well again
so she could return to work and support herself and the child.
She asked for Auntie Alf's prayers at Mass.
Alf longed to fly to Delia at once. But the shock brought
on such a diversion Father Driscoll thought it would never
end. Pictures descended from walls, taps spurted brown
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water, pot plants withered, the entrails of his fountain pen
came out and stuck quivering in a page of the parish ledger.
When Alf came to herself again she sent f50 to Delia to
help with expenses. She explained she could not leave Father
Driscoll, old and unwell.
Delia, who had written her letter as a try-on, to find out
what the stick-in-the-mud Trafalgar lot thought of her after
the silent years, was flabbergasted. She recalled Aunt Alf as a
queer old toad in a black apron down to her boots. Where
had the old girl got fifty smackers? Well, she hadn't them
now. Delia threw on her glad rags and set off for the
racecourse, for she was an addicted punter.
Delia had dumped the stock agent a month after she ran
off with him. He had marble teeth and indigestion and tended


       to whine about his children. She emptied his wallet and
flitted. Sydney during the War was a noisy, disorderly town;
there were soldiers for ever coming or going. Delia never did
a tap of work until after the Armistice; there was always some
fellow or other to look after her. When she looked back at
those years they were a gorgeous blur, full of dance music
and laughter, with herself perched in the middle with a
cocktail glass in her hand.
'Oh, I've had a divine firne!' Delia said, hoisting her skirts
and painting butterflies on her knees. Though the translucent
delicacy of her complexion had vanished, and her fine hair
gone frizzy since she bleached it, she was still a peach. She
stuck kiss curls on her cheeks with gum, and wore a gold
snake bracelet that wound from elbow to armpit.
Delia laid eyes on a respectable widower belonging to a girl
chum and soon had him by the wool. He was a little dusty
from being on the shelf so long, but he had no family, a


       steady job in a china factory, and was as biddable as a dog.
After they married Delia found that his salary was only
middling, but that scarcely mattered now that she had
stumbled upon a goldmine.
'God bless the old dingbat,' she sang of Aunt Alf, and she
wrote a letter of such eloquence that tears came to her eyes.
She was brave about both the bolting husband and her little
retarded boy. He was a mild little fellow and attended Mass
with her when she was well enough to go. His name was John
after his grandfather. The letter was so full of meek faith that
Alf longed to show it to Father Driscoll. But he, under certain
circumstances, was rash in his speech, and Alf had promised
poor Delia secrecy.
The deprivations of his early life had passed peaceably
from John Kilker's mind. He dimly remembered his 
stepmother as a sourfaced old tot, and his father as a big smell of
whisky. Alf recalled her Dublin life very well, but she had
long ago put it away from her. She was satisfied to be alive;
the full list of her blessings would have made her nightly
thanksgiving last the livelong night. Her only prayer for
herself was that she would last long enough to see Father
Driscoll into his grave.
This poor man had been a problem to the Bishop, for he
had no resistance whatsoever to the bottle. A devoted priest,
he had spent the prime of his working life in the outback,
riding, riding, days between homesteads sometimes. The land
looked like dry shoals. Shiny blanched pebbles worked their
way to the surface, lying there like frost. Greasy air hung just
above the ground, flawed by heat, making jokes of natural
shapes to tease travellers. All over that country were the old
80
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0,
0
shores of old seas strewn with little shells, webbed with salt so
bright you'd think it thrown there yesterday.
But so it was, thought Father Driscoll, the continent's
yesterday is still with us in those places.
He remembered the immaculacy of the inland sky, riot a
cloud, not a grain of dust between the earth and the planets.
Yet at night, as he lay on his groundsheet, staring upwards,
he had known he was wrong. The sky was crowded with 
stardust. Swift streaks of white chalk scratched soundlessly
across the heavens, swarms of bees scintillated for a second
or two and were gone. These meteorites, celestial mayflies,
accompanied him to sleep every night. To him they were a
sign of God's continuing creation.
The Far West settlers were what he lived for, the hard,
pared-down men and shy uncomplaining women. No matter
what he could bring them, the Sacraments, comfort in the
frequent deaths, mail, medicine, news, it was never enough


       for hirn. These unbeatable self-reliant people filled his heart
to such an extent that when at last his age caused the Bishop
to place him in an easy parish he found there was nothing left
for him to live for. He had always drunk freely, but the
ferocious heat had sweated it out of him. Now he became a
whisky priest, a potential scandal. At the end of six months in
Trafalgar the Bishop came to see him. His Lordship felt it
must be a personal duty to tell this man whose labours had
been heroic that he was to go into a retirement home.
Father Driscoll was at the tail of a spree, sick as a dog. The
Bishop was waylaid in the parlour by the housekeeper. He
always thought of her as a small woman, but after that he
recalled her as large, a woman of authority. He found himself
81


       agreeing that Father Driscoll was still a grand priest who
could hold his own with the best of them if someone kept an
eye on him. Alf won Father Driscoll a reprieve of six months
that time. When he came to himself she frightened him out of
his soulcase; she had the poor man sobbing with repentance
and shame. In spite of the Bishop's warning letters he had
never thought it would come to his being put in the cupboard
at fifty-five.
Alf's methods of keeping Father Driscoll a respected and
able man were her own. She consulted the doctor and her
brother John. Both were often seen at the presbytery in the
early days; Alf put it around they played chess with the
Father. She built up his physical strength, got him busy on
useful projects, such as building a new fence, painting the
church, reflooring the vestry. At first he was as slippery as an
eel as far as the booze was concerned, but Alf and John
gradually got that under control. The doctor dosed him with
something a fiend couldn't keep down. Father Driscoll had
both a frightful time and a good time. The six months
stretched into twenty years.
The only times of real peril during this long period were
when Father Driscoll went off for his annual holiday. Aunt
Alf dreaded his holidays. He visited his old seminary chums
and Inland co-workers, and more often than not came back
in a lamentable condition. The last five years Alf had
controlled him by threatening retirement if he got on the grog
while in the city. Being very dependent on her, he was
alarmed. So he went on the spree during his first week of
vacation, and was more or less recovered by the time he faced
the long train journey home.
During the first decade the priest's young sister, Mrs
82
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Butler, often visited Trafalgar. She and the housekeeper built
up a quiet, oblique friendship. It was oblique in that not once
was the brother's weakness and courageous battle referred to
by either woman. Mrs Butler had some ailment; she was as
frail as a feather, with melancholy eyes. Fortunately her
husband was wealthy and looked after her like a doll.
She died during the Great War, and to Alf's stupefaction
left her a large sum of money, in appreciation of faithful
friendship. She laid no conditions on Alf, but Alf silently
promised Mrs Butler, who had suffered so much herself, that
she would look after Father Driscoll as long as she lived.
After much thought, Alf decided she would not tell anyone
about the legacy. She believed God would let her know how
best to handle it.
When Delia came back into her life, sick and poor, Auntie
Alf accepted that God had spoken. After the letter about the


       retarded child, she sent Delia a blessed medal and f 10, and
much news about the family.
It had not been all good lately. Aunt Alf was anxious about
Josie and her prospects. Mr Capper senior had gone to
Sydney on business and died in haste under a tram. Within
two months his widow took in a partner at the Universal
Providers and presently married him. The bridegroom was
godless and virulently anti-Papist. Rowena was aghast to
hear that he had ripped the Sacred Heart off the wall and
used the frame to enclose the photograph of a racehorse. She
was more aghast to learn that Mrs Capper had thrown her
religion overboard and wed in a Registry Office. She was an
agreeable big heap who would have done anything for a quiet
life, but Eny raved on as if Mrs Capper had driven the last
nail, blunt at that, into Him on the Cross.
A
83


       A
She felt this with intense sincerity; her faith was part of her
blood and bones. Hers was a family that had faced death by
hunger rather than turn colour for a bowl of broth. She often
boasted that there were no soupers amongst the Mullinses,
and John, who came of a long line of desperate soupers, kept
mum. V
Tragically she said to Josie, 'That's the end of it with your A,
sheik, my girl.'
'But, Ma, they love each other!' protested Margaret.
Josie was frightened, but no one would have guessed. She
said calmly, 'If you want to know, Noel has turned, too.'
She could have added that Hatch, the new stepfather, had
threatened Noel that if he did not he could leave the
Universal and take his holy water with him. How could she
explain Mr Hatch's implacable hatred of the Pope to her
mother? She did not understand it and Mr Hatch did not
either.
Eny gave a scream to wake the dead.
'You'll never lay an eye on that Judas again!'
'I will,' said Josie, 'and I'll marry him, too.'
'But, Josie,' said Margaret, awed, 'you couldn't have a
church wedding; you'd have to be married in the vestry where
they wash up the teacups.'
'I'll marry him in the Registry Office,' stated her sister.
Josie was panicky over the turn of events. She saw Noel
being tossed out of his father's firm, and perhaps even
herself. Mr Hatch, a small maggot of a man with power for
the first time in his life, had already eyed her assessingly, and
made a fe,.N uncalled-for remarks about idolators. Still, Josie
had to turn her mind to the present, for her mother looked as
84
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if she were going to leave the ground. The girl took a grip on
herself.
'It's no use) Ma,' she said. 'My mind is made up.'
She had a face chilly as snow; pride was written all over
her. Margaret forgot all the spiteful things said and done.to
her and thrilled at Josie's dauntlessness.
Eny went for her daughter hammer and tongs. The battle
raged intermittently for weeks. Eny enjoyed every black word
of it, and yet made herself sick with weeping. She imagined
Josie scythed down in her youth, dying in her apostasy and
going to hell for ever.
'God be with us,' expostulated John. 'Isn't the girl only a
child? She can't be wed until she's twenty-one if we say no,
and long before that she'll hate the very sight of that long
streel.'


       John was dejected. He could no longer stand up to the
uproar. When the fury was at its height he had to go outside
and take a blast of his pipe. He took to visiting his sister more
often than he had throughout the years. He confessed that
the donnybrook was getting him down.
Inside his sister the big woman hammered at the walls,
ground her teeth. Nothing shut her up, not the Rosary Alf
said every even I ng, not early Mass. At last she strode into
Eny's kitchen, fixed her with a daggerish glare, and gave her
the father and mother of a telling off.
Eny had the frying pan in her hand but it did not occur to
her to swing it. The tears began to stream.
'God forgive me, I didn't think for a moment of what the
upset was doing to John.'
'It's a crying shame you don't do more thinking,' burst out
85


       1
Auntie Alf, burning for her favourite. 'For what are you
doing to Josephine, hacking away at her day and night?
You're doing to her what you did to poor Delia.'
Rowena looked at her with consternation. What did the
old woman have in her mind?
'For the love of God, Alf,' she said, 'have you no idea
what John and me suffered with that girl's misbehaviour? Do
you think we haven't cried our eyes out wondering if she's
alive or dead?'
'Fine words,' cried Auntie Alf in trembling rage, 'when
you drove her away with your unkindness. Don't think 1
don't know all about it.'
The big woman flew away in a puff. The small old woman
subsided on a chair, all of a heap.
Rowena had little trouble getting out of her that Delia was
alive, ill and repentant, and that she, Alf, had been helping
her with money. The mother was white and shocked. She was
all for setting out and bringing Delia home. But Alf dug her
toes in there.
'She made me promise not to let on to you she was alive.
I've done wrong there, with my unruly tongue, and I won't
forgive myself. But I won't tell you where she is.'
'I'm her mother!' cried Eny hoarsely.
She hammered away at Alf, she begged, cajoled and wept.
She used every persuasive tactic in the world, and she had a
headful of them, all well worn.
'You're denying her mother, Alf. The wickedness of it!'
But Alf was adamant. 'Delia knows you're her mother, but
she does not want you coming after her.'
Alf was strengthened by all the things Delia had told her
about Eny's indifference. 'Fine mother you were, passing her
86
1
mer all the time in favour of Kathleen. A darling girl
Kathleen was, and none has mourned her more than myself,
hilt there's no place for favouritism in a family, Rowena.
.-vid aren't you doing the same with Josie, poor child,
niak-ing a pet of Margaret the way you do?'
Eny felt so queer in herself, Alf's voice buzzing in her ears
like a mosquito, the pot boiling on the stove making a noise
of thunder, she thought she was going to have a heart attack
like John. She found herself shoved into a chair, and her
head pressed against Alf's flat front.
'Ah, God forgive me, I'm that sorry I spoke,' said Alf.
'I'ou've been a good wife to John, and no one knows it better
than me.'
'Don't speak of this to John,' whispered Eny. 'Mightn't it
kill him?'
Alf went away, not knowing whether she had done right or
wrong. She knew that Rowena would spend days arguing


       with herself, finding good reasons for wrongdoing or 
illjudgment, blowing up her virtues and sacrifices to the skies,
justifying herself to God in the most vehement manner. But
in her heart would be the cruel, unchangeable truth the Irish
could never get away from, wriggle as they might.
Alf was right. Eny wept scalding tears. She castigated
herself for being, perhaps, neglectful of Delia. But the truth
she found in her heart was that Delia had been turned
f towards wickedness from the start. She never cared for
anyone but herself, just like Will Mullins. The grandfather
had laid his weak greedy character upon the granddaughter,
and all Eny could do now was to hope time and God could
make something of her.
She visited Alf at the presbytery. The pair of them were
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       1 1A4,
very stately, sitting up like Jacky drinking tea. Eny had the
look of one with a fortnight's crying bottled up inside her.
She asked Alf's advice about Josephine. The girl was not
happy at home and neither was anyone else.
Alf suggested that Josephine should take a room at a
family boarding house , they both knew. It had strict hours
and a pious mistress. The strength of Mrs Kellerman's
character was known up and down the line. Rollicking young
sports avoided the Mount Carmel like the plague.
'Josephine has a good position and can well pay her way,'
said Aunt Alf. 'And please God Mrs Kellerman will shame
her out of the Registry Office. She's got that much of a
tongue on her.'
'There's another thing,' said Eny. 'I'll say no more about
Delia until you tell me yourself. But you'll send no more
money, if you please. All the world knows a priest's 
housekeeper gets only a pound a week and her keep.'
'A friend left me a fortune,' said Alf, 'but I'd be obliged if
you kept that between our two selves.'
Rowena now thought that Alf had gone out of her head
entirely. Her heart lightened. Probably she had imagined
hearing from Delia; the whole thing came out of her poor
spinster's brain.
'Fortune or not,' she said, 'Delia would soon have it away
from you. There was a vicious streak in that girl, though it
destroys me to say it. I'll say no word of the carryings-on with
men. There was something beyond that that made me and
John ashamed to see.'
Josie left home. It upset her very much, though no word or
look indicated this. She did much secret crying, and often
found Noel's grizzling about his problems insupportable. She
88
X
i
1
se t her mind to passing her examinations. Every Sunday she
and her fianc~ had dinner at home. For a while Eny was nice
as pie to Noel, so much so that even Margaret eyed her
distrustfully. But soon she was unable to stop herself giving
the occasional flick of the tongue to the turncoat.
John it was who was wounded. 'Ah, God, girl,' he said to
his \N i fe, 'Youth passes like the clouds. Let things be. Josie's a
great girl at heart. She'll do the right thing.'
Most of this drifted past Margaret, she being in a happy
dream of her own. She could not wait for the Icemen's
Picnic.
But Jer Darcy dreaded it.
Whenever Jer saw his brother getting into his blue suit,
finicking the gold dog's-head pin through his tie, his heart
thudded with apprehension. Jer power had failed him; he still


       did not know how to deal with Hugh and girls.
It was not that the younger brother did not yearn after girls
himself; his dream was that some day he would find one to
take care of him. He and Hugh had once seen a picture:
handsome young fellow wounded in the War, stunning girl
gives up own life to marry him and look after him. Eventually
the hero decides her sacrifice is too great. Lips firm, eyes
steady, he precipitates his wheel chair into the deep lake. But
Jer always stopped this movie halfway through, where the
bride fervently pushed her husband's chair through a
romantic landscape, and the pianist played '0, Promise Me'.
When Hugh came home from a dance guilty and 
puffyfaced, Jer was sick all night, his belly stiff as a board, his ears
ringing with fright. When Hugh was grumpy, saying the girls
were all bikes or great lumps with cowshit on their boots, Jer
89


       A
visibly relaxed, eager to listen to whatever disappointments
his brother had to relate.
He watched with dread Hugh's interest in mail days. Jer
had read all Margaret's letters; there was not a hiding-place
he could not ferret out. He panicked when he divined that
this girl was honestly stuck on Hugh; and when Hugh told
him they were going back to Trafalgar for a break he lost his
head.
Jer screeched, 'You want to be there for the bloody
Icemen's Picnic. You're after that bloody Kilker mare!'
Hugh got him on the bunk with his hand round his throat;
he cross-hackled Jer until he confessed he had read the
letters.
'I'm that scared you'll get tied up with her, Hughie,' he
wept. 'And she won't have me in the house and God knows
how I'll live.'
The tears did no good. For the first time Hugh backed
away, would not listen, went for days in freezing silence. It
was killing for Jer. His world had fallen down. He apologised
abjectly, said he was a curse to his brother and himself, he
wished he were dead. Hugh ignored him.
One Sunday afternoon the cook angrily shook Hugh
awake. The brother had cleared out, he said, and what was he
to do for an offsider? Hugh could not believe it. Jer setting
out under his own steam? He saw then that Jer's few
belongings had gone, all except the guitar. He found out
eventually that he had canvassed a lift to the main road,
where the motor coach passed on its way south. Hugh
castigated the shearer who had provided the lift.
'Gawd, what's biting you?' protested this man. 'Jer's
entitled to go where he likes. You own him? Any old how,
90 11 9
he'll be back. That coach won't have left Steinbeck. Look at
them skies.'
The coach was lower-slung than the old Fords. The road
south x~as disastrous, crossed by many creeks, bankless and
boiling over when heavy rain hit the hills. Hugh agreed that
the driver, who had often been bogged for hours in the fords,
would have chosen to stay overnight in the nearest settlement.
He pictured Jer labouring back that long way on his crutches.
Hugh set out at once on his bike. He had not travelled a
mile before the churning skies fell on him. It was worse than a
thunderstorm; it was a cloudburst. He had to shelter. An hour
later he took the bicycle lamp and butted through the roaring
wall. The road surface was ankle-deep skilly mud. It sucked
off one shoe. Hugh left it. It might come up again when the
road dried. He took to the paddocks, up to his knees in
water. He knew no other vehicle could have passed along the
main road in such weather. Jer must still be there.
He reached the road at last. It slobbered clay and yellow


       water as far as he could see. There was now little visibility.
Twilight had come with the storm. The wind was a vast fist
punching him towards the south. The trees lashed like
seaweed, roared, slapped at the earth.
He found Jer at last in the lee of a streaming bank. The
lamp's last light showed the boy huddled under a slicker
plastered with clay.
'You silly bugger.'
There was no moving from the bank until daylight. They
huddled together, freezing, the bush howling, the water
glugging and muttering. Towards dawn the storm rushed off,
spattering showers trailing it. All over the hills they could
hear new waterfalls crashing into the gullies.


       4
visibly relaxed, eager to listen to whatever disappointments
his brother had to relate.
He watched with dread Hugh's interest in mail days. Jer
had read all Margaret's letters; there was not a hiding-place
he could not ferret out. He panicked when he divined that
this girl was honestly stuck on Hugh; and when Hugh told
him they were going back to Trafalgar for a break he lost his
head.
Jer screeched, 'You want to be there for the bloody
Icemen's Picnic. You're after that bloody Kilker mare!'
Hugh got him on the bunk with his hand round his throat;
he cross-hackled Jer until he confessed he had read the
letters.
'I'm that scared you'll get tied up with her, Hughie,' he
wept. 'And she won't have me in the house and God knows
how I'll live.'
The tears did no good. For the first time Hugh backed
away, would not listen, went for days in freezing silence. It
was killing for Jer. His world had fallen down. He apologised
abjectly, said he was a curse to his brother and himself, he
wished he were dead. Hugh ignored him.
One Sunday afternoon the cook angrily shook Hugh
awake. The brother had cleared out, he said, and what was he
to do for an offsider? Hugh could not believe it. Jer setting
out under his own steam? He saw then that Jer's few
belongings had gone, all except the guitar. He found out
eventually that he had canvassed a lift to the main road,
where the motor coach passed on its way south. Hugh
castigated the shearer who had provided the lift.
, Gawd, what's biting you?' protested this man. 'Jer's
entitled to go where he likes. You own him? Any old how,
90
1
9
4
he'll be back. That coach won't have left Steinbeck. Look at
them skies.'
The coach was lower-slung than the old Fords. The road
south was disastrous, crossed by many creeks, bankless and
boiling over when heavy rain hit the hills. Hugh agreed that
the driver, who had often been bogged for hours in the fords,
would have chosen to stay overnight in the nearest settlement.
He pictured Jer labouring back that long way on his crutches.
Hugh set out at once on his bike. He had not travelled a
mile before the churning skies fell on him. It was worse than a
thunderstorm; it was a cloudburst. He had to shelter. An hour
later he took the bicycle lamp and butted through the roaring
wall. The road surface was ankle-deep skilly mud. It sucked
off one shoe. Hugh left it. It might come up again when the
road dried. He took to the paddocks, up to his knees in


       water. He knew no other vehicle could have passed along the
main road in such weather. Jer must still be there.
He reached the road at last. It slobbered clay and yellow
water as far as he could see. There was now little visibility.
Twilight had come with the storm. The wind was a vast fist
punching him towards the south. The trees lashed like
seaweed, roared, slapped at the earth.
He found Jer at last in the Ice of a streaming bank. The
lamp's last light showed the boy huddled under a slicker
plastered with clay.
'You silly bugger.'
There was no moving from the bank until daylight. They
huddled together, freezing, the bush howling, the water
glugging and muttering. Towards dawn the storm rushed off,
spattering showers trailing it. All over the hills they could
hear new waterfalls crashing into the gullies.
91


       Hugh untangled himself from his brother, went out on the
road to see if walking were possible. Jer's big black eyes
gaped from a pinched face.
'Where are your crutches, Jer?'
'I got one here. The other got stuck in the mud over there.'
He gestured at a drowned run-off beside the road.
'God, you're a crucifixion to me.'
When he said it, Hugh was sorry. Jer wept, coughed,
choked that Hugh should leave him to get home his own way.
'Shut up, you silly bastard. If I gotta carry you, that's it.
And don't bother coughing, I'm up to your tricks.'
He carried Jer through the paddocks to the one-mile post
where he had left the bike. He heaved the helpless boy onto
the seat and wheeled him through the sludge towards the
woolsheds. It was a fearful business; the wheels would not
turn; he could scarcely hold Jer on the seat.
'What's the matter with you, you useless bastard?'
Jer's eyes were glazed and mad, his face yellow. Hugh was
relieved when several men splashed to meet him, the squatter
with them. Jer was carried to the homestead. The squatter's
wife took one look at him and rang the doctor. There was no
getting in or out of Steinbeck until the road dried. The
woman, who was used to emergencies, packed Jer in blankets
and hot water bottles, and fed him sips of brandy. When the
road was passable they put him in the back of the truck and
slid and skidded into Steinbeck to the hospital, meeting the
doctor on the way.
Hugh was in a desperate funk. He thought Jer was going to
die. Jer's face had become so small it looked like an orange;
the eyes had gone back in his head. Hugh did not know what
to do, pray, or weep, or get drunk. The sister finally 
understood that he too had spent a night exposed to the cold and
92
4
1
11.0
wet, gave him a hot whisky toddy and put him in a spare bed.
Neither of the brothers came out of the experience very
well.
'He can't do any more country work,' the doctor told
Hugh. 'His chest is always going to be weak. If he gets 
another attack of pneumonia I wouldn't guarantee his chances.
Why don't you send him back home to Mum and Dad?'
'Got no home,' said Hugh. 'I'll look after him. Always
have, haven't IV
He had no idea what to do. At last he told Jer they were
going back to Trafalgar.
'I'll get a start somewhere. It's boom times. Must be plenty
of work even in a mudhole. And you can lay up a bit and get
strong.'
Jer nodded submissively. 'We'll do what you think best,


       flughie,' he said.
Hugh was uneasy and fretful. Death had passed them
closely, and he did not like it. A trembling started up in his
inside whenever he recalled the look of Jer in that hospital
bed. It was not altogether because he had almost lost his
brother. Probably his mother had looked like that, certainly
his father. I'll look that way when my turn comes, he 
realised, and was filled with horror. He felt alone; he could not
speak to the other men of his fear of death. Death made
everyone embarrassed. Margaret would listen. He sensed in
her a great deal of kindness and sympathy. He wished she
were there with him, right that moment.
He almost wrote and told her that. But he had enough
sense not to. Already he knew her well enough to understand
what she would make of it. He wrote a postcard instead,
saying he'd see her at the picnic.
93


       1
four
.k
The Icemen's Picnic came late in winter, when the plant
closed for maintenance. The hills showed blank, bright dribbles
of snow. In the high valleys ponds and bogholes smoked amidst
the unmelted frost. Yet the sunshine had the sting of heat in
it; in sheltered places winter wattle bloomed in heaps of gold.
'It's a moral you won't need your jacket,' said Eny to
Margaret, who was slowly turning before her in her new
costume. The scalloped hem of the black skirt came to the F
middle of her calves. The baggy matching jacket was
ornamented with whorls of silk braid. Margaret wanted to
leave the coat behind so that the stunning cape sleeves of her
new blouse could be seen.
Her father thought she looked a picture. Those cheeks! He
kissed one of them, thinking, 'Ah, God, I been lucky in the
kids I've had.'
Delia crossed his mind, poor little monkey. He hoped that
life had been kind to her, and he would see her again before
he dropped off the perch.
Sometimes John was devil-may-care when he thought
about dying. Other times he was not. But he tried to put on a
94
,f
good face for Eny's sake. He had a tussle with himself when
he faced up to the fact that never again would he throw the
hammer and hear the crowd yell for Johnny Kilker.
'You're an old pot now, me boy,' he told himself, 'and you
have a worn-out ticker. But, God willing, there are plenty
more years left in you still.'
The Council held its picnic at the same time as the Icemen,
as did several lesser trades. It all made for a jollier day. Thus
the Mayor's secretary wrote to John Kilker, respectfully
asking him to be in charge of the pudding and wear the blue
sash of officialdom. This honour assuaged his regrets. He
was as cocky as a dog with two tails.
Eny was delighted. 'You're more famous than jam!'
The four Trafalgar bakers had fretfully collaborated to
produce a monster plum duff. The entire town had gone to
see the mixing, contrived in the Council's brand-new concrete
mixer. A barrel of brandy was poured into the sticky black
batter, which was, at the end, enriched with many valuable
gifts: babies' bangles, silver teething rings, heart lockets,
thimbles and coins. The grand prize was a diamond ring,
reputedly worth more than a hundred guineas. Margaret
longed for that diamond ring, and her friend Herbie Lennon
said he would get it for her.
'It's five shillings a serve,' warned Margaret. Herb waved a
careless hand. In spite of her craving for the ring, Margaret
was peeved. She did not want to be obliged to him.


       'I don't want Herbie to take me to the picnic,' she said
querulously. 'Can't you say I have to be with you and Pa?'
Eny was irritated by her ingratitude.
'Tell him yourself! But if that Hugh Darcy doesn't turn up
you should give thanks to God.'
95


       96
'He'll turn up,' said Margaret complacently. 'I made a
novena.'
Eny was a great one for the power of prayer. But she
thought it would take more than a few Hail Marys and 
aspirations, said nine days running, to turn that cockalorum into a
steady fellow. The girl had a lovely faith, a pretty thing to
see, but she hadn't the gumption of a young chicken. The
mother didn't know whether to be vexed or sad.
'Ah, dotie,' she said gently, 'do all in your power to put
that one out of your mind. I know how, you feel, but 
something tells me there's no good in it.'
'I can't help it, Ma,' said Margaret.
Eny could have wept.
'Well, then,' she said resignedly, 'hang on to Herbie for the
time being. An extra pint of stout never goes to waste.'
Margaret was ashamed of her mother's cynicism.
'As to the ring, Herbie's your man there. He's as thin as a
lamppost, but he has a desperate appetite. I never saw a man
wire into a pig's head as that one did last Sunday supper.'
She brightened. 'If Hughie does show his face, odds on
there'll be a scrap.'
The previous noon the giant pudding had been put on to
boil in a corrugated iron tank. All night long relays of men had
watched and replenished the f ire, occasionally adding water to the
tank from. a cauldron bubbling near by. A publican with
Council ambitions donated a couple of barrels of beer, and
the evening and freezing night were boisterous. About 2 a.m.
one of the watch awakened, smelt something alarming, and
scuttled up the ladder beside the tank: It had boiled dry; the
pudding was flumped on its burnt bottom.
His cry of anguish brought the rest awake. They worked
1
f
4
like madmen filling the tank once more, building up the fire,
and swearing one another to secrecy.
John Kilker and Hugh Darcy wandered through the throng,
never meeting, both thinking of other days.
Hugh heard the chonk-chonk of the woodchops, the snore
of a crosscut saw. Kids ran races, their sunburnt parents
roaring. Once he had almost won a three-legged race. His
partner fell on her face and he just walked away, mortified to
death, leaving her lying on her freckles.
John recalled that on this ground he had first seen Rowena.
As a youth he'd had a shot at goldmining, scarcely seeing
colour at all. But still he wore the red silk neckerchief, the
wideawake hat, and the beard of the goldminer. These things
gave a man class. 'Them whiskers!' thought John, grinning.
They'd been an inky waterfall. He'd singed himself with his
clay pipe more times than he could count. Anyway, there he


       had been, sitting on a stump, quiet as a lamb, when up limped
this young girl.
'Move over, King Herod,' she said. 'Me feet are dropping
off.'
The sun shone on her hair as if it were copper wire. On it
was a bonnet like an upside down lettuce, tied under her chin
with fresh green ribbons to match.
A rush of affection for that bold girl filled old John's
heart. By hokey, he'd been the lucky one to get her! He went
off to find her.
But Hugh, looking for Margaret, found Eny first. It was
some time before he recognised her, sitting on an upturned
barrel drinking beer with her little finger sticking out. But she
knew who he was. She looked at the young man in the straw
boater, his ruddy face and big knocked-about brown hands,
97


       his fancy vest and celluloid rosebud buttonhole, and she
could have given anyone his history. He was like hundreds of
other young rowdies in Trafalgar, or any other country place
you could name. Knockabout jobs, never anything skilled,
always in fights, drunken brawls, getting thrown off 
properties, resisting arrest, language, clocking a policeman,
respectable family, mother's a saint, all her boys went to the
bad. It was a story so common Eny could have made a song
out of it. And this was poor Margaret's fancy.
'Pardon me,' she said winningly, 'but you have something
stuck on your lip.'
Hugh's moustache was dear to his heart. It was not a
moustached era; he had to put up with a lot of slack from his
friends.
He reacted as any other man of Irish blood would have
done; he slipped a riposte between her ribs.
'Isn't it fine that your sight is so good at your age, missusT
Eny's eyes sparkled. She had a liking for him from that
moment, though she never allowed it to alter her conviction
that this boy would make Margaret unhappy. She felt that in
her inerrable bones.
'Sit down and have a beer,' she said.
Hugh shook his head. 'It's Margaret I'm looking for,
missus.,
'Over there listening to the band,' said Eny airily, not
worrying at all. She could skewer him some other time.
Hughie drifted over to the bandstand. Margaret saw him
coming. Her excitement was so intense she felt suffocated.
The young man looked at this dumb blushing creature almost
with pity. It was her transparency he was sorry for, though in
an objective way, as if he had seen a dog run over.
'You came,' she said.
c
4
4
14
A
A
'Yeah. Here I am.' They stared at each other.
'Your letters,' he said. 'I liked them. Honest.'
,I'm not much of a hand with a pen, really,' she said,
blushing. 'Young Jer with you?'
'He's at the pub. Didn't want to come. He's been crook
lately.'
Margaret said she was sorry, but she was delighted to have
Hugh to herself. She trembled with anticipation.
'Hey,' Hugh exclaimed, 'your figure's different!'
Margaret had such a shock she turned beetroot red.
4You've got your nerve. I never .... Cheek!'
Her hand flew up to her bosom as if to defend it. She didn't
know whether she should walk away or not.


       Hugh gave her a long cozening look. She thought she'd
never seen such black eyelashes in her life.
'Aw, come on, love, don't be angry. It's just that I like you
better this way. I don't want you all parcelled up the way you
were last time.'
He had such a smile. He took her hand and rubbed it
against his cheek.
'it was them rotten stays of Auntie Alf's,' confessed
Margaret. 'Hurt like crazy they did. So I left them off.'
His smile said he was glad. Oh, Lord, thought Margaret,
~~'hat has he in his mind?
'Come on,' he said, and she went like a lamb down to the
creek.
'I've missed you real bad,' he said. 'Wonder whyT
She melted into his arms as though that was her place in
life. All the long months were forgotten; all was worth while.
The muttering water, the red-berried trees, the willows
dropping dry leaves in Hughie's black hair, all were straight
from the Garden of Eden. After a while she opened her eyes,


       and stared across Hughie's shoulder at a gnomish face gazing
through the willow fronds.
'Agh!' cried Margaret, ungluing her lips in a hurry. 'He's
spying on us, your brother, that blasted Jer!'
Hugh ran raging through the willows. Jer scrambled up the
bank like a crab, throwing his crutches before him.
'All right, all right,' gasped Jen. 'I'll go back to the publ'
'I'll do for you yet,' roared Hugh. 'I'll wring your flaming
neck!'
He was so mad he could have done it. But Margaret was
laughing, fixing her floppy hat with a long pin, flushed and
blissful.
'Ah, let him go, the poor thing. Did you hear me swear? I
got such a start!'
He kissed her again. But the magic had gone, Margaret
knew in an instant. He pulled her roughly towards him and
began to undo her blouse buttons. His face was fierce as
though he was angry with her instead of with Jer.
She pushed away his hand. 'You stop that!'
Even in her surprise and confusion she was struck with his
dark, glowering good looks. She grabbed his wrist with both
hands as he jerked open another button.
'I don't like you doing thaW
'Why not?' A dozen well-worn sneers were on his lips.
'I'm wearing an old singlet,' Margaret blurted out, 'and
it's awful.'
Hugh lau-hed. 'Christ, you're a seed. I've never met a
C
sort like you before.'
He held her arm above her head with one hand and 
continued unbuttoning with the other. 'Come on, let's see what
you've got.'
'You leave me alone!'
A
X
11 want to.' He was enraged with her. He forced her wrist
back painfully; he looked as if he would bite her rather than
kiss her. 'Bloody little stick in the mud.'
Margaret stamped down hard on his toes. She jerked 
herself away. Blazing-eyed, she yelled, 'I know what you want to
do. What I want to do doesn't matter, does it? You go to
hell!'
'Straight out of the cowshed, aren't you?' he shouted as she
turned away. Margaret faced him. 'I don't care what you
think I am. People have feelings, you know. No one is going
to make me do things I don't want to do.'
She began to run. Her head buzzed. She was faint with
dismay and consternation. I've lost him, I've lost him, he'll
never look at me again, I'll kill myself, I will, I will.
'Going my way, miss?' asked Hughie beside her. He raised
his hat, in all ways calm and composed. Margaret, trembling,


       about to break into sobs, laughed instead.
'You bloody, bloody fool!'
'Careful, miss, I was well brought up. I don't want my ears
soiled.'
She burst into tears. The water spurted out of her eyes as if
she were four years old.
'Why did you treat me like that? Horrible things you said.
Just because I've written you a few letters you think I'm
cheap. What do you mean, cowshed?'
Hughie did not touch her. He let her cry herself out. Then
he said, 'God, I been lonely!'
'I've been lonely too.'
'You've got your family.'
'Not the same.'
She wiped her face and smiled tremulously. They each
had something to say, something big, important, but
101


       t
neither knew how to say it. They laughed instead.
Margaret took his arm, and they went off towards the
circling crowds.
'Hey, you still going around with that droob in the band?'
'He sort of hangs around,' Margaret excused herself.
'You tell him to sling his hook, you hear me?'
Margaret thrilled to this masterly tone. 'He's not my boy
friend; he just thinks he is. But he's going to get the diamond
ring for me. The one in the pudding.'
'No,' said Hughie. 'I will. See if I don't.'
At the stroke of noon the Council crane hoisted the
pudding out of the tank and dropped it thunderously on a
wooden platform. The pudding cloth was four double bed
sheets sewn together. John Kilker, majestic in his official
ribbon, solemnly directed the bakers, nervously picking away
at the string that bound the Colossus. Eny, a dab hand at
boiled puddings, thought it smelt as if it were a sod and was
not backward in telling the bakers so.
Still the crowd pressed merrily around, anxious to get at it.
There was not a young man present who did not desire that
diamond ring.
Herbie Lennon was enraged to see Margaret arrive with
Hugh Darcy. She was flushed and excited, paying no 
attention to his glowering glances at the upstart to whose arm she
clung. She introduced them all over again, and once again
they grunted and looked the other way.
'Guess what, Herbie,' cried Margaret gaily, 'Hugh is
going to try for the ring, too. .-\nd he hasn't had any
breakfast!'
'if you're thinking of giving it to Margaret,' said Herbie
stiffly, 'I'd like you to know she's my young lady.'
Hugh shrugged, grinning in a sophisticated way that made
t
j
Herb long to job him one. But the odds were against him.
The chap looked like a scrapper, and Herb had to be careful
of his lip. He looked to Margaret for support. But she was
red of face, eyes sparkling with temper.
'I'm not your young lady, I've told you over and over and
you won't listen.' She began to laugh. 'Oh, don't take things
so seriously, Herbie! I came to the picnic to have fun. You
two silly things, to get all worked up as if it's a duel. You'd
think you were on the pictures.'
She struck a Norma Shearer pose, flung out her hand and
cried, 'I shall fall in love with the boy who gives me a
diamond ring!'
Herbie was outraged. He thought he would give the 
pudding the cold shoulder. To think that Margaret would make
such fun of him! But at that moment Mrs Kilker thrust a
plate of plum duff into his hands.


       'I'm barracking for you, Herbie!' she cried. 'Aren't you the
lovely boy! Hoe into it now, for isn't the butcher's young
fella a plate ahead of you already!'
Herbie ate mechanically. Fickle, fickle girls! He was so
abstracted he had eaten two servings before he realised the
pudding was indeed a sod.
The butcher's lad had hollow legs and a gob like a steam
shovel. Hugh soon recognised that here was his true rival,
inhaling the plum duff as if it were light as air, instead of
black and solid as mud. But he was young and hungry.
Nevertheless the pudding was a calamity. If he had served it
to a shearing team they would have woodheaped him. Still, he
was not going to be licked, either by the bandsman or the
butcher's boy. He commended his belly to God and got on
with the job.
'Fast and steady wins the race, my boy!' He thought it was


       104
someone encouraging him, but it was Mrs Kilker, fanning
Herbie with her hat and cheering him on. Hugh noted with
alarm that the bandsman ate neatly but with inexorable
speed. As fast as one plate was finished he reached for
another. People now bought servings for the contestants;
betting was hot.
'He's onto his seventh and he's found a thimble and a 
twobob bit,' crowed Eny into Hugh's ear. 'Ah, you've such a
face on you,' she added, 'you're halfway to a fit, there's not a
shadow of a doubt.'
'Piss off, you old faggot!' cried Hugh's heart and soul, but
his mouth was too full to utter the words.
One by one the competitors dropped away. Suddenly the
butcher's boy moaned like a calving cow and fell sideways.
He was towed off to fresh air and privacy by his backers.
"Twas a fearful sight,' said Father Driscoll to his 
housekeeper, who had not attended the picnic. 'Three young men
making beasts of themselves that way. Won't I skin them
alive on Sunday in my sermon, that's if they're fit to attend
Mass, which they won't be. Hugh Darcy I wasn't surprised
at, deprived of a mother as he was, dragged up by the scruff
by poor unfortunate Martin. But Herbie Lennon!'
Herbie was now a few mouthfuls behind. He felt somewhat
swimmy, his hearing was going. The yells of the excited
crowd, the whoops of Mrs Kilker close to his ear, all seemed
as if in a dream. He finished his eighth plate of pudding and
feebly took the ninth. Something in his brain said, 'You're
going to die.' He stood there swaying.
'I'm buggered!' It was an inhuman cry. Had he said it or
not?
Perhaps he had found the diamond ring, or maybe Hugh
X
Darcy had. The crowd surged away from him; he was left
alone.
,it's all over!' The crushing news made Herbie sit down
suddenly on the grass.
'What's happened?' he quavered to a passer-by.
'Fellow taken to first-aid tent. Stomach pump, they say.'
The passer-by, who was Father Driscoll, added scathingly,
'As for you, Herb, I'm disgusted. Bloated. Stuffed to the
gills. The amount you young fellas put away would have
choked Cromwell. You're a hog. And, anyway, Mrs Pettifer's
young Nora found the diamond ring in her first toothful.'
Herbie floundered home. He was in torment all night, but
the disorder of his head and belly was as nothing to the
disorder in his heart. The Margaret of the Icemen's Picnic
was not the Margaret with whom he had been walking out for
so long. He went over and over his behaviour and could not
fault it. Certainly she had told him many times she did not
want to be serious, but that had been merely girl's talk. He


       had been let down, betrayed. As well, he had been publicly
humiliated, less by Margaret's brazen behaviour than by the
indignities of the contest into which she had lured him.
His employer gave him dog's abuse, not only for the
hideous exhibition he had made of himself, but for using an
improper word in public.
'I'll have you know I run a respectable family business,
Lennon,' he said.
Herbie resigned. When Mrs Kilker called on him, he had
almost finished packing.  %.
'You wouldn't be going away!' she cried. 'Aren't you
going to fight for her?'
'Fight, fight!' said Herbie passionately. 'That's what


       A
you're after, is it, Mrs Kilker? Margaret led me on to make a
holy show of myself with that rotten pudding, but that's not
enough. Now you want me to get my lip split. Well, let me tell
you, Mrs Kilker, I saw the way your daughter was all over
that Hugh Darcy and so did everyone else. She went for him
like a mad hen. Downright common it was. She's making the
mistake of her life. He's a drifter, he's a load of rubbish.'
'You never said a truer word,' lamented Eny. 'Put up a
battle for her, Herbie. Stand up for yourself and your rights.'
'I wouldn't have her if she was given away with a pound of
prawns,' he shouted.
The astonishing thing was that this was true. All in a'
moment he had finished with Margaret as a cat might have
finished with its dinner. His long courtship meant nothing to
him. It belonged to the past. He saw Margaret as a plump,
unappreciative girl with hair that wouldn't stay tidy.
Ordinary, that's what she was.
Herb felt stronger, more alive, than he had ever felt before.
Rage had awakened him. The catastrophic sickness had
stirred up his slack metabolism. He looked at Mrs Kilker,
who had so often teased him so meanly, and his blood grew
hot.
'If you want the plain truth, I don't like a bone in your
body, Mrs Kilker, and never have. So go before you're
pushed.'
'He's nowhere near the molly I thought he was,' mused
Eny admiringly.
Herb returned to Jasper, where his family lived.Back there,
his mother and sisters so solicitous, he hardly spared a
thought for Margaret. He began to court another young lady,
far more suitable. Before the year was out they were married.
106
In fact he lived happily for another forty-eight years, the
father of a respected family. But Margaret's chagrin could
not accept this, and neither could Eny's. Gradually Herbie
died of the Big Flu. There was no one to contradict RoNkena's
romancing: 'Of course he could have, thousands of people
did. And weakened as he must have been by a broken heart!
Ah, the poor boy, God give him peace.'
The pair of them knew perfectly well it was only a story to
make Margaret feel better, but as time went on the tale
seemed so real, so tragic. The letter Herbie's mother wrote,
saying that his vitality had been drained away, he had no will
to live now that the one he adored preferred another; ah, it
was a sad, sad letter! In Margaret's middle age, when the
whole thing had passed into the unshakeable truth of myth,
she even sometimes looked for that letter. She knew she
would never have thrown it away.
Hugh spent three days in hospital. While Herb Lennon was
bowed down with humiliation in his boarding-house room,


       Hugh was bowed down likewise on his bed of pain. Jer was so
tearful Hugh sent him away in disgust. The doctor was no
help.
'You drink?' he demanded. Hugh nodded. The aoctor
prodded, palpated, mumbling, 'All you itinerant workers are
the same. A few more years and you'll have a liver like a bust
brick. Get off the sauce, you young bonehead. You've got all
your life before you, why not live itT
Hugh thought he would never drink again, or eat either,
come to that. He was as weak as a cat, his throat had been
scoured with gravel, his stomach an orchestra of rippling
squeals and resonant gurgles.
107


       Mrs Kilker came to see him.
'Margaret's too nervous to come in,' she explained. 'She
will have it you're due for the long box.'
She gazed at him with eyes hard as diamonds, and he gazed
back
'Would you fancy a pork chop fried in engine oil?' she
inquired.
'Gah,' moaned Hugh. 'Go away, go on, quick!'
She laughed. 'Ah,' she said, 'you tried hard to get that ring
for her. You're not such a bad class of poor fella. I've got the
brother over home, you know. Mr Kilker, he said he was not
to stay all alone in that dirty den of a pub. And you're to
come too, when they let you out. Just till you get yourself
settled, mind.'
'It's real good of you and Mr Kilker,' said Hughie
sincerely.
She jumped up, nimble as a young woman, good looking
still with her fresh skin and lively glance.
'I'll send Margaret in.'
Margaret came in with a rush. She looked as if she had
been crying her eyes out. Hughie, already reduced, felt a gush
of tears to his own.
'It's all right, it's all right,' he said soothingly.
'Ithought ... I thought. . oh, Hughie!'
He smoothed his hand over her hair. It was such a bright
pretty colour.
'I guess you're my girl, aren't you?'
She nodded, not looking at him.
'Reckon we'll end up together?'
He could see that she did. A feeling came over him that
1
A
k
108
he'd said something rash, wrong, knuckleheaded, but he was
too frail to care.
N,Irs Kilker said it couldn't rightly be called an engagement,
more an understanding. But John said it was: a finer young
fella never walked the earth, and he was getting a treasure in
Nlargaret. Jer was ceremonially embraced. He could see quite
well that Mrs Kilker had her doubts. Every now and then she
wheezed out a sigh meant to be noticed by all present. But he
was satisfied, himself.
Alone with her daughter, Eny wept. She begged her not to
do it.
'Don't rouse on me, Ma,' said Margaret. 'There's such a
feeling in my heart for him. Didn't you feel like that about Pa
when you were young?'
'I still do,' her mother might have answered. 'More so now
that he might be taken away from me.' But aloud she said,
'It's for better or worse, you know, dotie.'


       'I know it might be for the worse,' said Margaret. 'I know
he's a wild sort of one. Don't cry any more, Ma, because I
won't ever again.'
'Oh, girl,' said Rowena. 'God be good to you in your 
foolishness.'
In due course Hugh joined Jer in the Kilkers' spare room.
Their house was the old colonial kind, with a veranda all
round it, shaded with wistaria, passionfruit and choko vines.
Out there the Kilker boys had slept before the War. Rowena
said neighbours had complained of the bedtime rumpus for
half a mile.
As hospitality in the country towns stood high amongst the
virtues, the back bedroom was the best furnished in the
1
109


       A
house. In the unaccustomed surroundings Jer and Hugh were
all feet, pickily washing at the wash stand, speaking in
whispers. They lay side by side in the high-legged iron bed,
gazing at the marcella quilt, white as swans, smelling sunshine
and dry grass on the sheets, and feeling like two sore thumbs.
'This is giving me the rats,' said Hugh.
'They're lovely people, lovely,' said Jer unctuously.
'I don't care. I'm getting the shits with all this fancy stuff.
I'm clearing out in a day or so.'
'Course you are,' said Jer. 'Mr Kilker said it wouldn't do,
you and Margaret being gone on each other the way you are.
Not proper to be under the same roof.'
Thoughts raced through Hugh's head. They were all ahead
of him, all of them.
'She's not like that. She's a good Catholic girl,' he said.
'Go to sleep for God'sake, flaming earbasher.'
Margaret had wound her toes in the hem of her nightdress.
She heard her father shoo out the cat with Hun-like threats,
give the last clang to the poker as he banked the fire. There
were a few squeaks and door clicks and a rhythmic murmur
as her mother recited what she called 'a decker' of the Rosary
before she went to sleep. Margaret could guess what the 
current decade was in aid of, an engagement going up in flames.
'Fat chance,' murmured Margaret. She felt languorous and
melting, her hair long and silky, her skin like velvet. She
rejoiced in her own body. Oh, she had a lovely shape. Josie
might look better in fashionable pleated skirts and long
cardigans, but once their clothes were off, she, Margaret, was
like one of those old statues. Suppose Hughie came to the
bedroom window right now, and tapped quietly, asking her W
110
to come out across the moonlit lawn, into the shadow of the
trees?
I I'd go like a shot,' thought Margaret. She clapped hand to
mouth, shocked.
,Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help me to be. . .
1
1
X
~1
1
But what did she mean? Strong, good, sensible? Whatever
it ~Nas, she knew that the three of them would be of no use
whatsoever.
Jer lay awake in the comfortable darkness. This was the
life -a clean bed, and white curtains tied back with cords, and
no steam whistle blowing in the cold dark morning. Things
had turned out his way and no mistake. He had already
sounded Mr Kilker out on whether Margaret was the 
sweetnatured Christian girl he'd picked her to be, one who


       wouldn't mind a cripple around the house. Mr Kilker was
offended to think Jer had even doubted it.
'She'll be as pleased as Punch,' he assured Jer. 'Won't I
ask her about it today.'
Margaret knew Jer and Hugh went together like finger and
thumb, and readily agreed. She felt confident he'd scramble
away quick enough as soon as the children began to arrive.
Once Jer accepted that one day Hugh would marry, he saw
that Margaret Kilker, easygoing and religious, was the one
who would best look out for him.
It was a good thing for Hugh to get married; he understood
that now he was a man.
'Oh, yes, I know you all right,' he thought. He placed an
affectionate hand on his sleeping brother. He loved him
devotedly, but he knew himself superior in intelligence and
foresight. Hugh had cheek and courage; you'd never come to
Ill


       the end of his charm. But somewhere in his character he was
flimsy. Jer saw him bowling for ever around the State, like
one of those uncanny bundles of dry grass and thorns, a
rolypoly, rolling this way and that before the wind until it
fetched up against barbed wire and fell to pieces. Wherever
he and Hugh had worked there were jokers like that, in all
stages of disintegration. Drifters, they called themselves, free
men, sons of liberty. Jer knew how they felt. Their way of life
provided them with one long open door; whenever 
responsibility threatened they ducked through it. But the barbed-wire
fence was always there, always. They came up against it
because of age, failing health, too much booze. That's when
they looked around for someone to go home to, and found there
wasn't a soul in the world. Besides, marriage wouldn't keep
Hugh at home, if he wanted to remain a seasonal labourer.
Jer knew the routine of too many of those: hard workers, but
free and easy, back home three or four times a year, get the
wife in pod, teach the boy how to pass a football correctly,
dig over the garden, tell the young daughter she'll get her
teeth kicked in if she goes too far with the boys, lay some new
lino in the kitchen, kisses all round and off again grape
picking, cane cutting, fencing, or whatever the game was.
Besides, thought Jer, it might be the world's best fun living
with a newly married couple. What price Jer power then?
Within a few days Hughie moved out to a working-men's
boarding house, saying firmly that that had been his 
agreement with Mrs Kilker.
'Certainly you've been very good to me,' he said, 'and I
won't forget it.'
Neither Rowena nor John would hear of young Jer going
as well.
112
X
0
k
A
k
11
'The amount he eats wouldn't choke a sparrow. He's as
welcome as the flowers in May, what with his light spirits and
all.'
Margaret put a good face on it, but she feared that Hugh
might vanish from Trafalgar overnight. She saw plainly that
he was made uneasy by order and system. He was like a wild
dog coaxed briefly into becoming a pet. The moment backs
were turned, over the fence with him. But still, his last words
to her were that he would see her on Sunday.
The truth was he did not know which way to jump. One
part of him feared that every marriage was like that of his
parents. He could see, of course, by looking at John and Eny
Kilker, that all marriages were not. But the panic was there.


       There was in him a craving not to be lonely any more, to
have a place of his own. He didn't like the boarding house,
which had curtains so old mason wasps had built their clay
skyscrapers in the folds. Margaret might have starched white
lace curtains like her mother had. Yet, as he thought this very
thing, something feral in him capered with glee at the chance
of escape from such pussycat domesticity.
In the end he came to the conclusion that Margaret was as
good as anyone else to get engaged to, and that even if they
got married some day (and most likely, they wouldn't) he
need not change his ways.
The Kilkers gave Margaret and Hughie a family party.
Josie was chagrined to see Margaret wearing a ring, a small
ruby in a heart of brilliants. She yearned to tell her sister it
looked like a rat's eye. But she was too uneasy in her own life
to risk unpleasantness with her parents. She had frequent
misgivings about her love for Noel Capper. If she loved him
truly, why did she want to screech at him every time he
113


       opened his mouth? The worst had happened. Noel the urbane
boy had grown into Noel the man and a calamitous stodge he
was.
Hugh visited the Trafalgar employment agency, and 
accepted a job offsiding at a woolshed two hundred miles away.
He said he had to put together a bankroll before he could
think of getting married. It was the proper thing to do.
He kissed Margaret heartily, told Jer he'd get his tenner for
the ring back at the end of the month, and that he was the
luckiest coot in the world that the Kilkers wanted him to stay
with them and build up his health.
'Imagine me going off on my own and you not even letting
out a yip!' he said to Jer.
'Things are different now. Our luck's turned.'
'Well, maybe you're right.'
Hugh was embarrassed and pleased by Margaret's tears
when he left. He felt much more the parting with Jer, but Jer
was as carefree as a bird. Hugh was aggrieved. At his 
destination, he had to wait for the station truck. He met some of
the team in the local pub, got as full as a boot and passed out.
When the station boss arrived he said curtly, 'Leave that one.
We got a champion cook and I'm not giving him no boozer
for an offsider.'
Hugh hung around the town for three days before someone
took him on as a rouseabout. Morosely he sat on the truck
tray, bumping over a road made with a knife and fork. The
wind went through him like a needle. Well, this is the way it
is, he thought. He had always made do with rough rides in
store lorries, wind biting your nose off, getting in through the
holes in your pants. And if it wasn't cold, it was hot, cycling
114
through empty, exhausted villages, the day on fire, 
blackfellas leaning against the one listless tree, dust puffing up
around the shoes of anyone who dawdled down the street.
Hugh knew several of the men at that shed. He was taken
aback when they frankly expressed their disappointment that
young Jer wasn't along.
'Jeez, he's a wag,' they told the others. 'The yarns he
comes up with! Go on, Hughie, tell the one about the 
ringbarker from Gatha.'
Hugh told them the scabrous story about the loner so 
fabu5
lously endowed that he was known as the Gatha Entire. He
put in all the funny bits the way Jer did it, the wheelbarrow,
the way the Palmer Street trotters ran screaming when they
saw him coming; but he didn't get a grin.
'Doesn't sound right somehow, coming out of that kewpie
mug of yours,' grunted one. '
He detested mucking around with raw dirty wool after the
years cooking or offsiding. His hands had softened while he
was in Trafalgar. Instead of having the usual spine-bash on


       his bunk, he spent too much of his spare time with a needle,
picking burr tips out of his puffy fingers.
He missed Jer more than he would admit, the clean
mended socks, greasy clothes washed without his asking.
Companionship. Jer's gossip and jokes. He had an impulsive
desire to tell Margaret what his brother meant to him, pain in
the tit as he was. He wanted to tell her about himself in every
detail. It was as though the girl could supply definitions and
boundaries to his life.
'Be damned to that,' thought Hugh, going off to join the
other jokers at the cookhouse fire.


       Jeremiah lost no time in making himself useful about the
Kilker place. There was no end to the things he could do,
weeding the garden, peeling and scraping, getting a meal on
that would tempt a nun.
Eny took a great fancy to Jer. Their experiences in the
House of Horror were a bond. She thought that if someone
put a rope on him and stretched him out a couple of feet he'd
be the finest looking boy in the district. Added to that, he was
such a clever little nab in the house.
'You'd make someone a jewel of a wife!' she 
complimerited him.
Swiftly Jer put on a wan look, and then a plucky one. He
allowed his dark eyes to grow moist. Eny could have kicked
herself.
'Ah, boy dear,' she lamented. 'I've a tongue that could
skin ferrets. I'm that sorry. 1 didn't mean that by any manner
of means.'
Jer forgave her with a smile and a wistful look.
'It's just that 1 like to feel useful. As far as 1 can, that is.'
As he left the kitchen it seemed to Eny that he was less spry
than usual on his crutches, and she wondered if he endured
pain, never letting on, like the heroic soul he was. She was
hard on herself all day.
Jer knew women to a T. If he could arouse their sympathy
he had them tight in his fist. He did not admire them for this;
he considered that women's urge to protect and aid came
from a yearning to make great big benevolent ladies of
themselves.
He was, at this time, quietly looking around to see where
he could employ Jer power.
He was already thick with old John. He wouldn't hear of
116
0
A
Jer's looking for a little job for himself somewhere.
'Aren't you here to build yourself up after the illness?'
asked John testily. 'You're that thin you're like death on
wires. You let my old girl pet you a bit.'
John was fascinated by Jeremiah. He could not get enough
of his music, or his stories either.
He asked his wife: 'Did you know their grandfather was a
statue? Poor Martin's Dad, he was a great man in the old
country, and there's a stone statue to him some place in
Galway.'
Rowena was cynical. 'I'll believe that when I see it. Why,
last Sunday Jer sang me a song he said he'd made up himself,
and God knows it was one I heard me father's Fenian uncle
sing many a time.'
She did not hold Jer's weakness against him, but admired
him for his audacity.
'Wouldn't any living soul amongst us do the same thing,'


       she demanded, 'should we be all scrunched-up as poor Jerry
is, God help him?'
Aunt Alf told Father Driscoll the Darcy boys had a statue
for a grandfather, and Father Driscoll challenged Jer.
'He's Robert Emmet, no doubt,' he said sarcastically, 'or
maybe Dan O'Connell.'
But Jer was too fly for that, saying that he fancied the
grandfather was only a poor tenant farmer who died for
freedom during one of the Risings.
'God rest every manjack of them, martyrs that they were,'
said Father Driscoll. 'And are,' he added darkly, for the
latest troubles in Ireland were far from over.
Jer had a flock of Irish songs. He was invited Into the
presbytery office to sing them. This den was the priest's own.
117


       1
He was supposed to say his Office there as well as make the
parish books balance.
, She never sets foot in here,' boasted Father DrIscoll,
jerking his head towards the kitchen, 'not even to clean.'
It was a dingy lair, stinking with the pipe smoke of fifty
years. The varnished walls were covered with photographs 
seminary groups; two Popes, the current Archbishop, all with
ringed hands upraised in remote blessings; Father Driscoll's
mother, a severe Corkwoman with a bald head and a lace
fantod on top of it; and Father Driscoll himself, on horses,
mules, camels. Jer looked at each intently, and listened to the
story about it. He saw he would be able to adapt several of
them. Father Driscoll became quite excited, his flat cheeks
flushed. He wished like hell he could offer the young fellow
something more manly than tea.
Jer cherished his guitar. It was battered and beaten, but his
fingers and its strings loved each other. Father Driscoll
looked at the lad with pity, poor little gammy. Then Jer
turned his educated glance on him.
First of all he knocked the stuffing out of the priest with
'Twenty Men from Cork', and completed the work with the
antique tune of 'Slievenamon'. He picked him up and filled
his heart with fire with 'Who Fears to Speak of 
NinetyEight?' The old priest rose to his feet and sang in a
quavering roar:
'Some on the shores of distant lands their weary hearts
have laid,
And by the stranger's heedless hands their lonely graves
were made.
But though their clay be far awqv beyond Pacific foam,
In true men, like you, men, their spirit's still at home.'
118
0
1
ef
Cr
1
'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' thought Alf, listening beyond the
door. 'He'll blow out a blood vessel.'
Father Driscoll felt his heart lurch. He sat down carefully.
Jer filled his pipe and lit it for him.
'Did you notice, lad,' said the priest when he had his
breath back, 'I changed Atlantic to Pacific because of the
many of us laid here in foreign soil in the penal dayT
,you did it well, Father,' said Jer. 'Is the pipe all rightT
'Ah, this pipe would draw in a blowfly. Herself gave it to
me, her out there listening at the door.'
Alf smiled tolerantly.
The priest smoked for a while. Jer observed the throb in his
thin old neck.


       'Ah, my boy,' he said at last, 'that music of yours would
start up a paralytic. I ask your pardon if I am too forward,
but is there no way your poor feet might be straightened?'
'Oh, there is,' said Jer instantly. 'There's operations, I've
been advised. But it would take five hundred pounds. Oh, at
the very least, Father. So I have put that out of my mind.'
The priest grunted. Auntie Alf, waiting beyond the door,
went back to the kitchen, shaking her head over the boy's
wonderful resignation to the holy Will.
Father~ Driscoll thought young Jer worth a stack of gold.
He couldn't have enough of him.
Very soon Jer had the run of the presbytery. He was the pet
of Auntie Alf. Jer did not know quite what he was aiming at,
but good friends never went amiss. He cleaned the silver for
Alf, sang her touching songs like 'Eveleen' and 'Eileen
Alannah', and when she went to do the shopping slid into
her bedroom and examined her belongings. There he found a
bankbook recording an amazing sum of money and a bundle
of letters from her loving niece Delia. He saw at once what
119


       '~R
was happening. He committed Delia's address to memory
and scratched his head over what he could do with this new
knowledge. Jer power worked in hidden ways which might
well be revealed to him later.
To Father Driscoll Jer praised Auntie Alf to the skies. The
priest said maybe so, grunted, or looked secretive. He got
sneaky enjoyment from putting down a person who had been
so good to him.
'Ah, she's not a bad old dealer,' he admitted.
'And then there's her niece, Delia,' said Jer, ready to look
concerned, happy or interested as the case might be. Father
Driscoll told him the shocking story of Delia, transparently
wrapped up here and there because of Jer's youth.
Well, thought Jer, no fish without a trifle on the hook,
and, swearing the old man to secrecy, told him about the
money going to Delia at such and such an address in Sydney.
He went off well satisfied that he had started a pot boiling,
although whose pot he was not quite sure.
Father Driscoll was, of course, privy to his sister's will. At
the time he had seen through the dear soul's stratagem and
known that Miss Kilker would take care of him until he went
to his reward. He was well aware that many of the comforts
about the house came from Miss Kilker; the parish fund
would never have sprung to the hot water being laid on in the
bathroom. He took these benefits for granted. After all, that
was what the legacy was for. And, too, Miss Kilker being
eight or so years younger than himself, there would be a few
pounds left to look after her in her dotage.
He now became agitated. He could have gone out into the
kitchen and scragged the woman, except that the lad, with his
120
delicacy and trust, had sworn him to secrecy. He stamped up
and down the office, smoking like a flue. The witless old
chook was going to dribble the money away, and to Delia
Kilker, of all people.
"vVhy,' he groaned, 'if she had to give my poor sister's
money away, it could have been to Jer Darcy, to have his feet
fixed.'
His heart gave a single sodden thump, then fluttered so
erratically he had to sit down and ring his little bell. Alf
flapped in, undid his collar, put a cushion under his head and
gave him his angina tablet.
'You're a desperate colour, Father,' she said. 'I'll fetch the
doctor.'
A 'You will not,' he gasped, angrily waving her out of the
room.
As soon as she heard him snore, she looked in at him. His
nose stuck up sharp and pallid as that of a dead man. She
called the doctor. He put Father Driscoll into bed at once and
said he was on no account to leave for his holiday, which was


       due in three weeks. Father Driscoll went off like a 
firecracker.
The doctor gazed at him and remarked, 'No doubt you're a
good old box of tricks and ready for heaven any moment, but
would you say this moment?'
Father Driscoll could not let go of his disappointment and
bit Alf's head off every time he saw her. She thought it was
because she had fetched the doctor, but in reality he was
festering about Delia and the money. As he had grown old,
he had become very self-centred. His vital powers had drawn
themselves about some central fount of life, and would so
1
1
121


       concentrate more and more until death squeezed his heart
into silence.
Truth to tell, there had never been much to him except his
obsessive, pure love of the people of the Inland and the way
he served them. His devotion to his native land was nothing
compared with that. He would have sunk Ireland, Cork to
Coleraine, if it had benefited his outback parishioners. His
life in Trafalgar was a cosy, trivial routine except for his
priestly duties. Sometimes he realised this, remembered the
vehement idealism of his young life, and was fleetingly sad.
Oh, his heart was a furnace then!
'There,' he said to himself, 'I've done my dash and God
won't be hard on an old man.'
122
it
A
V
1
1
f0
ive
It \\as near Christmas, an ardent day, Sydney gasping
under a sky violet from the smudge of industry. When the
watercart passed there was for a moment a string of puddles
blue as iris, and then nothing but whiffs of steam. Under the
pleasant odours of ripe fruit and fried fish was the dankness
of wet coal, heated metal, the stink of engineering.
From his window the night before Father Driscoll had seen
a thousand columns of seething smoke, each sitting on the
rosy light of a factory chimney. He thanked God he had
ended up in the fresh air of Trafalgar. Oh, he felt a 
countryman when in Sydney! He who had studied in Rome here felt
like a lost dog with low antecedents. His heavy black clothing
stuck to him, his collar was iron itself, his feet balls of fire.
He cursed the doctor for delaying his holiday so long.
In Jersey Road he asked the way to Delia's from workmen
with black singlets and sweaty faces; they were hanging out a
pub door with schooners of beer running with dew. He
wished he'd had the gall to ask one of them for a swig.
The houses were pushed together in a wall. Dolls' houses
they were, with frontages ten feet wide, balconies 
orna123


       mented with ringletted wrought iron. And here was Delia's.
He banged the knocker, and leant his forehead against the
door.
'I'm whacked,' he thought.
'I'm looking for Mrs Delia Barry,' he said to the man who
opened the door.
'She's out Christmas shopping. Here, you look done in.
Come in out of the sun, Father, and have a cold drink. It's a
scorcher today, no mistake.'
The husband was a chatty man, glad to have someone to
talk to. The priest pressed the cold glass of lemonade against
his wrists and listened. The front room was dim, a paper fan
in the small arched fireplace. Moquette upholstery 
overheated the back of the visitor's legs; a palm fountained in the
window between the plush curtains.
'She's got it that nice,' said Mr Barry. Father Driscoll
looked perceptively at him. He had uncertainties, this man,
so much older than Delia could be. He had a mouth too eager
to please.
'Blessed Mother,' thought Father Driscoll, 'I can't put the
Jezebel's pot on with this poor man .... And has God given
you the happiness of children, a son perhaps?' he inquired.
Mr Barry said no. Delia had a boy by an earlier marriage, but
he was a mental case, so afflicted that she had put him in an
institution and had not seen him since infancy.
'But maybe it's just as well. I'm a bit long in the tooth for
kids, and Delia likes a bit of fun, going out and that. I've a
steady job in the crockery. I do glazing. Won't you wait till
she comes home? I'll put the kettle on.'
'I won't,' said Father Driscoll. 'It was just that her aunt,
Miss Kilker, my housekeeper, asked me to call and see that
124
1
1
1
all NNas \\ell with her. Her aunt will not be writing to her
again.'
,Why, I didn't know they corresponded,' said the 
husband. '1~ something the matter with Miss Kilker?'
'Arthritis in her hands,' lied the priest fluently. 'Can no
more pick up a pen than a ton of bricks. Poor woman's a
martyr. But of course Delia can send me a line if she wants
news of her aunt's health.'
Returned to his guestroom in a city presbytery, Father
Driscoll considered telephoning some of his old friends. But
he was sick and shaky. All the anger against Alf - and now
against I)clia - that churned inside him demanded outlet. How
he could have lashed into that deceiving, wicked woman,
playing on her good aunt's compassion and natural 
affection! Lies, lies, lies! She, so well off, a home of her own, a
decent husband, cheating money out of an old maid 
presby

       tery housekeeper! But wasn't it Delia all over, greedy and
grasping, caring for no one but herself, taking that simple
soul Barry down as well?
His heart sounded like a pot boiling. He put a capsule
under his tongue and lay down, praying for charity.
Somehow it had deserted him. All he wanted to do was to
choke Delia Kilker.
Father Driscoll went home without having had as much as
a beer with his old mates. Those who were alive were very old
now; he'd always been the youngest and strongest in that
group. Parched thin faces they had, soft scanty white hair,
trembling hands. He embraced gently each one of them. God
keep you, Patrick, William, Brendan. He felt it was the last
time they would meet.
All the way home in the hot dusty train he considered the
125


       manner in which he must tell Miss Kilker of Delia's perfidy.
Every style seemed wrong and cruel.
He prayed, but no enlightenment came. It was necessary at
last to go into the kitchen and ask her for a cup of tea and tell
her to sit down and have one herself. Alf was pale; she knew
he had something on his mind. Perhaps he had seen a Sydney
doctor and received frightening news.
He told her baldly what he had seen and heard.
'She's been codding you, Miss Kilker, she doesn't want for
a penny. And as for the son, she left him in an institution
when he was two months old and has not seen him since.'
It was a mortal blow for Alf. She looked like neither the
big woman nor the little woman. Father Driscoll feared she
might faint or have a seizure.
'Here, Miss Kilker,' he said nervously. 'Drink your tea. It
will put heart in you.'
He thought she would strike it from his hand.
'Why did you have to tell me? Wicked. Heartless. That's
what it is.'
'Why. . .' stammered the priest, 'to save the money you
were throwing away on her. Wouldn't she have left you with
half nothing, she's that rapacious and unprincipled.'
'Money, what does that matter?' asked Aunt Alf. She
could feel furious pain in her stomach. But it was not there
she had been stabbed.
'You leave my kitchen,' she gasped. 'I don't want to look
upon your face.'
~11 n : 11
1
drains blockeq, and a sheet of roof iron blew off in a breeze
that would not tip the coal from a pipe. A possum fell down
the chimney aind father Driscoll had to get a man in to pull
the fireplace to pieces to let the creature loose. Something
drowned in the water tank and gave them both a sickness not
to be mentiOrled.
Aunt Alf did her duty in the presbytery as well as usual.
She spoke only once to Father Driscoll.
'How did You know about Delia, that I was sending a little
money?'
'I have my ways,' replied the priest loftily, hoping to awe
her with HO1Y Orders.
'Chah!' said Alf.
She wrote him a note. 'I wish a Mass said for her and for
her husband.'
She enclosed a ten shilling note. Since five shillings was the
usual Church offering, and that by no means a law or rule,
Father Driscoll was insulted. He saw what husbands had to
put up with from hostile wives. She intended the offering to
mean that he was over-interested in money, that was why he
went spying Oil Delia. He was using that word to himself
no~\, ashameo and repentant.


       Sometirnes he \vondered how Jeremiah had come by his
information. He had believed that Alf had told the boy. But
perhaps it ha(l been ]Eny or John.
The whole thing had taken a great deal out of Father
Driscoll. He felt rnore and more a little old lame duck of a
at er r sco made the sign of the Cross as he left, but man, short Of breath and pluck. It took days before he could
whether on her behalf or his own he did not know. He went screw his courage to the point where he could remind Rowena
to his study and groaned out a few prayers. He had meant to and John that the Church forbade their attending Josie's civil
do right but somehow he had done wrong. marriage.
In spite Of her uncertain feelings, Josie had squirrelled her
Alf went through a bad time and so did the presbytery. The
126


       manner in which he must tell Miss Kilker of Delia's perfidy.
Every style seemed wrong and cruel.
He prayed, but no enlightenment came. It was necessary at
last to go into the kitchen and ask her for a cup of tea and tell
her to sit down and have one herself. Alf was pale; she knew
he had something on his mind. Perhaps he had seen a Sydney
doctor and received frightening news.
He told her baldly what he had seen and heard.
'She's been codding you, Miss Kilker, she doesn't want for
a penny. And as for the son, she left him in an institution
when he was two months old and has not seen him since.'
It was a mortal blow for Alf. She looked like neither the
big woman nor the little woman. Father Driscoll feared she
might faint or have a seizure.
'Here, Miss Kilker,' he said nervously. 'Drink your tea. It
will put heart in you.'
He thought she would strike it from his hand.
'Why did you have to tell me? Wicked. Heartless. That's
what it is.'
'Why. . .' stammered the priest, 'to save the money you
were throwing away on her. Wouldn't she have left you with
half nothing, she's that rapacious and unprincipled.'
'Money, what does that matter?' asked Aunt Alf. She
could feel furious pain in her stomach. But it was not there
she had been stabbed.
'You leave my kitchen,' she gasped. 'I don't want to look
upon your face.'
Father Driscoll made the sign of the Cross as he left, but
whether on her behalf or his own he did not know. He went
to his study and groaned out a few prayers. He had meant to
do right but somehow he had done wrong.
Alf went through a bad time and so did the presbytery. The
t
drains blocked, and a sheet of roof iron blew off in a breeze
that would not tip the coal from a pipe. A possum fell down
the chimney and Father Driscoll had to get a man in to pull
the fireplace to pieces to let the creature loose. Something
drowned in the water tank and gave them both a sickness not
to be mentioned.
Aunt Alf did her duty in the presbytery as well as usual.
She spoke only once to Father Driscoll.
'How did you know about Delia, that I was sending a little
money?'
11 have my ways,' replied the priest loftily, hoping to awe
her with Holy Orders.
'Chah!' said Alf.
She wrote him a note. 'I wish a Mass said for her and for
her husband.'
She enclosed a ten shilling note. Since five shillings was the
usual Church offering, and that by no means a law or rule,
Father Driscoll was insulted. He saw what husbands had to


       put up with from hostile wives. She intended the offering to
mean that he was over-interested in money, that was why he
went spying on Delia. He was using that word to himself
now, ashamed and repentant.
Sometimes he wondered how Jeremiah had come by his
information. He had believed that Alf had told the boy. But
perhaps it had been Eny or John.
The whole thing had taken a great deal out of Father
Driscoll. He felt more and more a little old lame duck of a
man, short of breath and pluck. It took days before he could
screw his courage to the point where he could remind Rowena
and John that the Church forbade their attending Josie's civil
marriage.
In spite of her uncertain feelings, Josie had squirrelled her


       1
trousseau together, saving, hunting bargains, sewing. Josie
had a chest of drawers at the Mount Carmel, packed with bed
linen, tea towels, table runners with edges of fluted crochet.
'If Noel has not saved enough for a home by my 
twentyfirst,' she said firmly, 'I'll postpone the wedding. It's the
principle of the thing, a man's responsibility. What's Hugh
doing about your future home, I'd like to know?'
'He's saving,' protested Margaret. 'You know that's why
he can't come back to Trafalgar often.'
Being engaged had made Margaret touchy. The slightest
criticism of Hughie made her fly at the throat that had
uttered it. She did fatuous things like refusing milk in her tea
because he took his black. She choked down rice pudding
because it was his favourite. She threw out dresses she t
thought made her look fat. She was extravagantly happy and
as morose as a wet cat, huddling in corners and crying
because he hadn't written for a week. She thirsted for spoony
phrases in these letters and found every excuse in the world
because they were not there. Her eyes got bigger and her waist
smaller, she went for hours without a sensible thought.
'You'd think you were addled!' scolded Eny, but Margaret
only looked at her with a dazzled gaze. There was a glow
around the edges of everything.
'Of course he could come home between jobs!' scoffed
Josie. 'Tell him you won't marry him unless he is more
considerate.'
'He's just right as he is. You shut your big mouth.'
'Soppy, that's what you are.'
Josie held up against herself a tiny satin camisole 
embroidered with daisies, and put a secret look on her face.
Margaret gazed with wistful envy. She often had disgraceful
1
daydreams about Hughie; she couldn't imagine where she got
them. She was ashamed to confess these thoughts to Father
Driscoll, burning with mortification when he enlarged on his
belief that no unmarried Catholic girl would possibly lower
herself to indulge in such immodest fantasies. Margaret
accepted these castigations meekly, but on the way home she
thought, 'What an old sap!'
Father Driscoll lived in a kind of holy fairyland, she
thought, and her mother and father pretended to.
She and Hugh, when he did return to Trafalgar, were not
left alone for a moment. They escaped to the outdoors with
clumsy scufflings, groans, and ecstatically chewed lips.
'Stop it, Pa'll hear.'
'You've got to. Take your hand away.'
'I wor't, I'm scared. You mustn't ... oh, God!'
Margaret tried to hide her bruises, her guilty eyes, from her
mother.
'Have you and that young tomcat been up to mischieff


       demanded Eny.
'No, we haven't,' retorted her daughter haughtily. This
was true. Hughie had departed grumpy, evil-tempered,
saying he ached like hell and it would do him no good. All his
hostility was focused on her, the cowardly squib.
Margaret accompanied him to the station; he answered her
only with grunts and monosyllables. He called from the train
window and Margaret hastened to him, sure that he would
give her a kiss and a few sweet words to be going on with. But
all he wanted was some new socks sent after him.
She chose the socks with passionate care, and wrapped
them likewise. She even loved his clothes; she couldn't get
enough of him.
129


       . 1
Still, Margaret often cried. She had not known that being
engaged was so difficult. It had not seemed difficult for
Josie.
However, no matter what kind of a face Josie put on for
Margaret, she had misgivings. Every now and then she sat
bolt upright out of sleep, clammy with sweat, her head
stuffed with tears. Suppose her parents had been right, she
had been too young to get engaged, there were more pebbles
on the beach, people changed as they grew older?
Why had she wanted to marry so young? Josie knew it was
to pip Margaret. And she had. She'd shown them all.
Josie blamed herself for her disaffection. Noel was no
different from what he had always been, agreeable, dull, and
gentlemanly. Deserting the religion of his forefathers had not
worried him. He was never piqued with her, even when she
was tart or silent. She went to the doctor, saying she was
nervy. He gave her an iron mixture, with an assurance that
she would feel quite herself when she was married and had
commenced her nuptial duties.
Josie resigned herself to frustration, which was what the
silly old goat was trying to say, and blamed everything else on
that. But she was restless and uncertain. She expressed this to
Noel. To her astonishment he banged his fists on the wall,
said she was letting him down and he would kill himself if she
called off the marriage.
Josie was impressed by this display. Perhaps there were,
after all, fire and passion in Noel and the nuptial duties
would make up for years of waiting.
On her twenty-first birthday she married Noel in the
Registry Office. John Kilker was so upset he would not even
attend the wedding reception.
130
1
'I'd be bound to say something to that blackfaced bowsie
Hatch, for he's at the bottom of it all,' he muttered. So
Rowena went alone.
There was no enjoyment for Eny at the reception. Mrs
Hatch was flushed and guilty, fearing that her old friend
would lash into her as a turncoat. Mr Hatch was in a fume
about something, ruby-faced and jabbering. He had a
swallowtail of orange ribbon in his buttonhole.
'Not a word about the Pope, Mr Hatch,' advised Eny.
'This is a happy day for us all, and God knows I don't want
to send you home with a broken nose.'
She swept a glance around at the teetotal punch6owl, the
glum faces, the blanched bride, and went away. Her heart
ached for that girl. Something was wrong, cold, hard as nails.
But for John's sake she pulled herself together, cooked a fine
supper, rallied Margaret that she would be the next one, and
twice as beautiful a bride.


       Margaret rushed from the table.
'Will you never learn to take your foot from your mouthT
scolded John.
'You're right there,' said his wife dolefully. 'if Margaret
ever gets that Hugh up io scratch it'll be the wonder of the
world.'
'Ah,' said John, 'he's young yet, and so is she, come to
that. Josie wag engaged to her sweetheart for years before
they wed.'
'Josie was not Margaret's age,' pointed out Eny. 'God
knows what the girl sees in Hugh Darcy, shifty article that he
is.'
'He'll settle down,' said John placidly. 'Like me.'
Hugh had written Margaret such an inflammatory letter
131


       she could hardly sit still. The thought that he could not carry
out all he promised or threatened was torment to her. She
wrote begging him to name the day. What did it matter that
they had little money? They had been engaged more than a
year and waiting was so hard.
'No,' he said. 'A man has principles. People would look
down on me if I didn't provide property for you.'
Jer, privily reading this before Hughie posted it, rolled up
his eyes.
Margaret's eyes filled with tears. It wasn't fair. Nothing
seemed fair. She was terrified that her mother or Josie might
get hold of the letter. Her father would feel it his paternal
duty to knock Hugh's block off for writing dirty things to his
daughter, and then he would drop dead. She had no good
place to hide it, so she tore the pages up very small and
regretfully flushed the bits down the lavatory.
As Jer's health had improved, he sometimes went on jobs
with Hugh when the conditions were good and the weather
warm. When he was away, Jer wrote letters to everyone, full of
fun and jokes, making light of his difficulties. He wrote more
personal letters to Auntie Alf, saying his heart was often
heavy, he would never save enough money for his operation,
and would she pray for his intention, since she understood
him better than others.
John went off to visit Father Driscoll, who was not well,
and Alf took the opportunity to see Eny. Alf told her 
sisterin-law about Delia, not mentioning the girl's deceit, but that
Father Driscoll had visited and spoken to her decent poor
fellow of a husband.
'I don't think you need worry about her any more, Eny,'
she said. 'She's landed on her feet. And as for the money I
i
1
1
sent her, well, no doubt there was some little emergency and
I'm glad I could help.'
'Ah, Alf,' said Eny, 'you're a good woman, a saint off the
wall, and I hope you get your reward. I'll tell John and set his
mind at rest.'
So she did. The pair of them lay in bed, holding hands,
wondering why it was that some children turned out 
wayward, and others were straight from God's hand.
John had nLver ceased to hope that one day Delia would
walk in. At Christmas or on his birthday, perhaps. He said
this to Eny, adding, 'It'll be like the boys, I suppose, off
leading their own lives and hardly sparing a thought for the
old people. It's Nature, my dear, and we're powerless against
it. I
Eny snapped 'Why does God give us children, when they
all go away from us one way or another? There's no justice in
it.'


       , Isn't that the truth of iff said John. 'When I left Dublin,
I never sent a line to my old Da. The young have no hearts.'
'Oh, him!' snorted Eny. 'Giving you that Nero for a 
stepmother. Serve his bones right.'
'Young Jer writes letters,' she thought. 'It might be good
and it might be for purposes of his own. He's got some plan
or other at the back of that head of his. Sharp as a butcher's
knife, he is.'
Not long afterwards, Father Driscoll died. His heart
banged like a drumstick, twice, three times, and off he went.
He was seventy-eight and had been marking time for a long
while. His funeral would have gladdened that Bishop, long
gone, who had reprieved him from the retirement home.
It was a great blow to Aunt Alf. She could not eat or sleep.
13


       She became so thin you could blow her off your hand. Jer
was home again, and if it had not been for him, keeping her
company, rousing her spirit with music, telling her jokes and
stories, it might have been the end of her. John was grateful
to Jer; there was nothing he would not do for that boy. Eny
sometimes looked at Jer suspiciously, but she kept her
tongue still.
Auntie Alf was now sixty-seven, and so was pensioned off
by the diocese. Saint off the wall or not, Eny was frightened
that John might now call their bargain of many years before
and take it for granted that the old sister should live with
them until God called. She felt that if Auntie Alf was to have
one of her diversions in the kitchen she'd fly up the wall.
But Alf rented a little stone cottage near the church.
'Won't you be lonely, my dear?' asked her brother, after
he had dug her garden for her and put a nail in the 
sittingroom wall for the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
AWs delicate digestion had come against her since the priest's
death. She looked like a dry twig in a black dress.
'Haven't 1 God always with me?' she said. John, who had
intended to suggest a nice housewifely cat, was defeated.
Nevertheless Alf hankered for Josie to visit her and not
stand on her dignity the way she did. Her niece's final
decision to marry out of the Church was a grief to Alf. How
could the girl bear the thought of life without grace, without
the Sacraments? But she had never, by word or look, 
indicated this to Josie or the family. Still, Josie, because of the
empathy she had with her old aunt, knew how she felt, and
stayed away.
When she wed, Josie resigned from the Universal 
Providers. It was the custom; no one employed married women.
134
Josie had often questioned this tradition. Why should a
wedding make any difference? Her diligence turned inwards
on itself; she felt deprived and resentful. In no way did she
enjoy marriage. She learnt more about Noel in a month than
she had in five years, and none of it was to her liking.
Noel too found his life in disarray. There were scenes of
passion, sulks and recriminations. Much talk of frogs,
freaks, beasts and savages filled the honeymoon house. Aside
from the private shocks Josie sustained, she discovered that
her husband was a gambler. How was it possible she had not
guessed, not heard a rumour? She raged at him.
'Where the blazes do you think 1 got the money for this
house?' he asked defiantly.
Before six months had passed, Mr Hatch proved that his
stepson had been embezzling money for years. In a 
thunderous scene, staged before the shop staff, he dismissed Noel,
demanding that the new home be sold to help defray the debt.
Noel saw that Trafalgar offered him no future except legal
proceedings and prison. He coaxed from his mother all the


       cash she could raise, and left for Sydney.
He was fond of Josie and thought that this desperate crisis
would bring her to her senses, which it did. She saw it as a
way out of her miserable marriage and repellent nuptial
duties. She let her husband go alone. She told no one of
Noel's pleas. She allowed gossiping Trafalgar to believe he
had cruelly deserted her.
Eny wanted to rush to Josie. She didn't know her own
feelings about it all, but Josie was her daughter. But John
said, 'No, let her come to us. She knows she's welcome in this
house always.'
Josie needed all the spirit she had. It was true she had
135


       chosen the lone way herself, with fair knowledge of what it
would mean. People would righteously condemn her. No
matter what Noel had done she was expected to stand by him,
her hands clasped and her eyes turned up like the Mother of
Sorrows. If he was sent to jail, as well he might be, she must
be standing outside the prison gates when he was released.
Josie recognised the injustice and hypocrisy of this moral
attitude, and scoffed at it. But scoffing did not alter it. She
would have to face it just the same.
Nevertheless, bitter chagrin consumed her. To be left 
penniless by a thief and gambler like any silly woman around the
town! She could not understand how it was she had never
seen through Noel Capper. Blackness welled up in her. Bile or
hatred or despair, it half drowned her night after night. How
could she survive, neither married nor unmarried, twenty-two
years old? She felt changed, bent over, her hair in snaky
locks like Medusa's. Yet when she looked in the glass in the
morning there she was, her girlish face clear and unmarked.
Dainty as a doll. Josie thought that if her youth survived such
anguish it could survive anything. And so it must.
Margaret helped her pack. She could not help weeping into
the enviable tablecloths and underwear of her sister's 
trousseau.
'Oh, Josie, what will you do? Please come home,' she
pleaded. 'Ma and Pa want you, they really do. And I do too,
Josie.'
'Stop bawling, for goodness' sake,' said her sister. 'It's not
the end of the world. Noel turned out a flop. I'm relieved to
be rid of him.'
Margaret did not believe her. She thought Josie was hiding
a broken heart.
136
J1
'She's just like Joan of Arc,' she told her mother.
Auntie Alf heard a familiar knock at her door and was
glad. There was Josie standing beside the hollyhocks.
, Please help me, Auntie Alf,' she said. For the first time
XIf saw tears in her niece's clear eyes.
11 will,' said Alf.
The new priest was radical-minded. He said nothing to
Josie about getting her just dues for marrying out of the
Church. He pulled rank and found young Mrs Capper a 
position in the accountancy department of the butter factory.
Knowing she had no means of support and was desperate
for work, the manager offered her less than the single girls,
who were receiving only half of the male rate anyway. The
pittance was enough for food but not for lodging. Josie set
her teeth and accepted it. The manager had not relished being
bullied by the priest, and promised himself he would give the
young madam curry.
Aunt Alf offered her niece a home, and Josie accepted.


       John Kilker was disappointed and bewildered.
'You've a right to come back to your own family,' he
protested.
But Josephine defended her independence. She had made a
mistake and must find her own way out of it. She told her
father that when the required number of years had passed she
would divorce Noel for desertion.
'We've never had a divorce in the family,' he muttered,
scandalised.
'Don't tell Ma yet,' she asked. 'She must never hear what I
had to put up with. Noel was not the kind of man you are,
Pa.'
John could not bear to think what she meant. He resolved
137


       to defend Josie against her mother's fire and sword. But Eny
was not over-wrathful. She had one blazing hour of
recrimination, maternal sorrow, and hopes that Josie had
learnt her lesson. Josie said not a word. She looked almost as
though she were praying. Margaret admired her generously.
'If it was me,' she said rashly, 'if Hughie left me, after we
are married, I mean, I'd pine away.'
'Get the meat in the pot before you cry over its loss,'
snapped her mother.
Margaret tossed her head huffily. But in reality her
mother's sharp tongue had not touched her. She breathed
and dreamt Wappiness. Hughie had written to say he was
coming home for a week's spell before going on to the next
job. Work was getting scarce; he had had to take on the hard
labour of scrub-cutting. Margaret floated on a sea of
romantic love.
'Jer's not coming.'
'I thought them two went together like the two legs of a
peg,' said Eny tartly.
'He's gone to Newcastle to see a specialist, to find out
where he can get his legs straightened.'
'If he's saved as much money as all that he's a better man
than his brother,' said Eny. Margaret remained silent. No
matter how hard Hughie worked, he seemed unable to keep
money in the bank or even in his pocket. Now and then he
sent ten or fifteen pounds to put in their wedding savings
account, but no sooner had she gloated over the balance than
he borrowed it back again.
When Hugh knew that Father Driscoll had left Jer F-100 he
tried all in his power to borrow it.
138
,1111 pay it back right after the wedding, my first cheque,'
he said.
'Like hell,' said Jer. He thrust out a twisted foot, waved it
under Hughie's nose. 'I know your promises. Where's my ten
quid for the ring? You guttled that down like the rest.'
'I've been a good mate to you,' shouted Hughie. 'I stuck
with you like Mum said when anyone else would have shoved
you in a Home.'
Jer said nothing, staring, peaked face and hollow-eyes,
rubbing his knotty toes. Hugh flung out. He was ashamed of
himself, but relieved, too.
'Tell that Margaret to get a job, if you're so hard up,'
yelled Jeremiah after him.
it was just a spat. After grumpy sparrings, offhand favours
done, they were as before.
Hugh broached the question of a job to Margaret. She, the
daughter at home, had never thought of work outside the
home. She had taken for granted her mother's belief that a
girl's work in the house was a rehearsal for her inevitable life
as wife and mother.


       'I'm not trained for anything,' she said doubtfully. 'I can
only do housework.'
Rowena hit the roof. 'No daughter of mine is going out
scrubbing boarding-house stairs!' she stated. 'No word of
this to your father, Margaret. The very idea would kill him. I
suppose we'll see you working in a factory after you're wed,
expecting or not, and my lord at home with his feet up.'
She was abrvpt and unfriendly with Hugh when he spent
his next layoff with them. Prevented from tearing his ears off
because of John, she made do with slamming the pots
139


       around, never serving rice pudding, and sarcastically snorting
whenever he made a remark.
'What's up with the old girl?' he asked Margaret.
'It's me being supposed to get work,' she said hesitantly.
'She's that old-fashioned,' she added apologetically.
'Well, I've had a crawful of it,' he said, and went away
three days earlier than he had to.
'I will get a job,' she vowed. Shyly she tried for this
situation and that, and at last found one, three days a week
helping at the kindergarten.
There they treated children like short adults. Briskness,
discipline, no sentimentality were the rule. Margaret did too
much kissing and cuddling.
'Are you broody or whaff demanded the teacher acidly.
Margaret was removed from the children and set to scrubbing
the classroom, sweeping the playground, washing the nappies
of those marked on the roll as WET. She might as well have
worked in a boarding house.
Still, she stuck at the job. She saved her wages, and the
bank account began to fatten a little.
'Where'd Hughie's brother get a hundred pounds?' Josie
asked. Margaret told her.
'I wish Father Driscoll had left me something,' said Josie.
'Well, there's Aunt Alf's fortune,' said Margaret,
laughing.
She told her sister about the old lady's fantasy. Josie
smiled deprecatingly. Still, she thought seriously about that
fortune. Aunt Alf was a great one for holding to the truth.
After Father Driscoll went off to God, Alf predicted that
she would not be long after. Her work was done. She thought
140
i
A
of herself as looking more and more like a pressed pansy and,
like it, fraying away into dust.
But Nature had other plans. Certain glands in her insides
shut themselve5 off; chemicals in her brain dried up for ever
or flowed more copiously than before.
'Alf's getting fat around the middle,' commented Eny.
'You'd think she was four months gone.'
Margaret blushed crossly. Since she had become engaged
her mother often said vulgar things to her, as though
breaking it gently that marriage would be a sight more
indelicate than she dreamt.
Alf's physical health was now better than it had ever been.
But her mind was turbulent. Memory patterns dormant for
years were activated. At night she woke suddenly in her dark
room, the hollyhocks kissing the window, and was back in
Dublin, that woman's iron fingers twisted in her hair.
'Get in there, you ugly beast of a thing!'
She was thrown into a cupboard, pitchy, stinking of mice


       and mothballs, John already in there, crying, wetting his
pants with fright and misery.
'I'm here, dotie, Alfie's here,' she had whispered, fondling
him, his unbrushed hair, his mouth crusted with sores of dirt
and neglect.
Alf, in her old age, hissed, growled, ground out: 'I hate
her, I hate her, I pray the pigs will chew her bones.'
She fell back on the pillow, her ears buzzing, frantic with
rage. Her heart walloped. It was some time before she calmed
herself, failing then into a passion of repentance.
How could such thoughts return? She had forgiven her
stepmother over and over again. She had rooted out from her
141


       1
memory the clothes she wore, the face she grinned with, the
voice with the venom of snakes.
But there she was in Alf's mind, hard, flat, a woman not
for little children inside or out, slapping away and screeching:
'Now will you own up that you done it, you bick, you dirty
useless slutT
Old Alf cowered, hands up to protect her head. It had
always been her fear that the woman would break her ear
drums as she threatened.
Josie, candle in hand, opened the door. Instantly Alf was
back in the present.
'Don't you look like a fairy standing there in your nightie!'
she said. 'Did I give you a start, Josie? I had such a
nightmareP
Though such nightmares went away, the memory of them
did not. Alf was consumed with fear that she had never
forgotten the stepmother, never given over hating her and
wishing for vengeance. She was obsessed with the idea that
she had made bad Confessions and, worse, bad Communions
all her life; that wickedness, unconfessed, unrepented, had
been with her all along. She asked the priest about it, crying
and agitated, but he was too young. He said it was just her
age, she must pay no attention. She returned angrily to her
cottage. The man was nothing but a clown. They were hard
up for decent, devout young fellows to ordain nowadays. Not
in a million years could she imagine Father Driscoll telling
any poor troubled soul it was her age.
To whom could she speak? Only John. She made him
swear never to reveal their conversation to a living soul.
John, alarmed, promised.
'She's dead, isn't she, JohnT
4
i
'WhoT asked her brother.
'Her. The one who married our father.'
John stared in consternation. If Alf was going astray in her
wits he felt he couldn't stand it.
'You haven't been seeing her, AlfieT
'No, no, no,' she snapped at him. 'Only in dreams. But
she's in my mind all the time and the things she did to you
and me, John.'
She confessed her worries, the hidden sin of intractable
hate, the bad Confessions, the unsympathetic young priest.
John soothed her.
'Ali, Alfie, it's just bad old memories swimming up, that's
all. That woman is dead the dear knows how many years ago.
Wouldn't she be about a hundred and twenty if she was still
kicking?'
'But how can I get her out of my niindT asked Alf
piteously. John was stumped.


       'Say an aspiration. That's it, my dear. Say Mary help,
Jesus save, and try to think of something else. Now tell me
about Josephine. Is she happy, do you think?'
But the stepmother stayed in Alf's mind, an obsession. The
realisation of her unabated hate caused Alf more misery than
the memories. The hate thrived. Murder was not beyond it. It
followed her around like the reek of foul water.
Although she loved the girl so much, she was not altogether
at ease with young Josie. Josie did not behave as if she were
in disgrace. 'Did I expect thatT Auntie Alf castigated herself.
'Badly treated and all as she was by that Noel Capper. The
tattle she has to face, the way that plague of a manager at the
butter factory treats her!'
Aunt Alf had never in her life lived with a young woman.
143


       144
At first it was quite thrilling, new fragrances in the bathroom,
nail polish in the kitchen, a little orange lipstick called Tangee
falling out of Josie's braided dolly-bag. Auntie Alf looked at
the lipstick, perturbed.
'I didn't know you used that stuff,' she said reprovingly.
'I'm sure it's not right. Our Lady didn't use lipstick.'
Josie explained that Tangee was very ladylike. On the lips
it changed to your own natural colour.
'I'd look such a freak if 1 didn't make up a little. Everyone
does,' she explained.
Josie persuaded Auntie Alf to let her cut her hair, saying it
would grow thicker and stronger and maybe even have a curl.
Alf had always worn her hair pulled back to a little bun, first
brown, then grey, and finally yellow-streaked white.
Such alarm she had as the thin locks fell to the floor and a
cold draught blew on the back of her neck! Josie shampooed
her hair, putting a little laundry blue in the rinsing water, and
set it with clips. Alf had to sit in the sun until it dried.
'Whatever will 1 say to Eny?' she worried. 'She's sure to
torment me with the teasing.'
Finally Josie took out all the metal clips, brushed and
pushed the hair around, and told Auntie Alf to go and take a
look at herself.
The old woman could not believe it. Waves rippled in the
shining white hair.
'It's just like white satin,' said Josie, pleased. 'You look
beautiful!'
Alf lived on those words for a day. She then plucked up
courage to visit Eny, who lavished praise.
'Oh, won't the boys all be after you now!' she cried.
The months went past, and Josie began to make changes in
1
the cottage. It was a cold, dark kennel, with windows as big
as tea trays, and a back door opening in winter into the
glacial south wind. The interior walls had been varnished in
Queen Victoria's day and, what with smoke and dirt, had
become almost black. Josie persuaded Aunt Alf to let her get
them papered.
,you'll never know yourself, it'll be so light and bright,'
she coaxed. 'Well, just let me do the hall!'
She sold two or three wedding presents, the EPNS cutlery,
the Westminster clock from the Hatches. Paperhangers were
cheap. Times were getting hard, and men jumped at the
chance of extra work. She sent Aunt Alf over to her brother's
for the day. When Margaret escorted the old woman home
the house was filled with the smell of flour paste and
turpentine.
Margaret saw a long hall papered in cream, a frieze of
green leaves and yellow buttercups at both ceiling and floor.
The ceiling was white, the plaster rose in the middle touched


       up with green. Alf was overwhelmed, and so-was Margaret.
'It's just stunning,' gasped Margaret. 'I feel I'm in a
garden. Oh, I wonder if Hughie will have our place papered
tooT
But Aunt Alf felt unsettled. She had become used to grainy
varnished walls and smoke-stained ceilings. Every presbytery
she had known had had the same.
'It's terrible light,' she said doubtfully. 'Won't it mark?'
'Oh, we'll be careful,' said Josie gaily. 'Say you're
pleased, there's a dear!'
One by one the rooms were papered or painted. Auntie Alf
gave her permission, but she always felt dubious.
'It doesn't feel right somehow,' she confided to Eny. By
145


       1
the time Josie began to make new curtains Alf was in the
depths of her obsession with the stepmother, and when she
saw the red material tossed over the sewing machine she was
horrified.
'People will think it's one of them bad houses!' she cried.
'They're just for the kitchen, Auntie,' said Josie. 'They'll
make it so warm and cosy. And in summer we'll hang a nice
muslin.'
But Alf felt herself skim over the precipi , ce. She was going
to have a nervous attack and she could not do a thing about
it. Josie was white as a sheet; she was saying something, but
Alf couldn't hear. The tea caddy fell from the mantelpiece
and scattered the tea; down came the picture of St Rita,
patron of the kitchen, and smashed on the hearth. A blue
flame ran like St Elmo's fire around the edge of a stove plate.
'You're always making me do things I don't want to do.
You bully rne,' shrieked Aunt Alf. 'You made me cut off my
hair!'
'I did not,' she heard Josie say clearly. 'You thought about
it for months. I've done nothing without your permission.'
'Delia took my money and you're taking over my house,'
said Auntie Alf. She fell into a chair quite exhausted. She i
knew she had been dreadfully upset about something or
someone, but she could not remember. The stepmother had
blown away like a bat. Alf could not recall the torment she
had suffered for so long on that woman's behalf.
She said feebly to Josie, 'Oh, my darling girl, did I say bad
things to youT
'You just got upset,' said Josie. She made the old woman
lie down, covered her with a rug, made her tea. Alf was
blanched and shaking for a long while.
146
,It's time for me to go to the Little Sisters,' she said sadly.
lit's in my mind that for a while I've been not quite right in
the head. I've had thoughts that dreadful you wouldn't
believe.'
Josie embraced her. 'But you've got me, Auntie Alf! I'll
look after you for as long as you need me. You need never go
to the Little Sisters as long as I'm here. Fancy us letting you
go to a Home in Sydney, away from all of us, away from Pa!
And besides, you're not old enough for a Home for the
Aged!'
Auntie Alf looked at her tremulously. 'But 1 said cruel
things to you, 1 know 1 did. You had tears in your eyes.'
Josie hugged her again. 'You were cross about having your
hair cut, that was all. But it will grow again in no time. There,
there, lean against me, I'll look after you, Auntie Alf.'
Alf had leant against no woman's breast since her mother
died. How strange it was, putting her cheek against 
something so soft, so vulnerable and yet so protective.


       'I think I'll go to sleep now, Josie,' she said. 'Aren't you
like a dear daughter to me?'
'Yes,' she thought with wonder, 'I've never been a missus,
but 1 have a dear daughter just the same.
'Still, I've been a kind of a missus,' thought Aunt Alf
drowsily. 'Spending my life looking after men, putting up
with their sulks and funny little ways, making ends meet,
being lonely, darning them thousands of black socks, always
being there when they wanted a cup of tea or an ear to
complain into, being respectful. Not much different from
other women.'
At this time Josie had not questioned Auntie Alf about her
fortune, nor had she examined the old woman's private


       papers. She was not desperate enough. Nevertheless, the
thought of the money was always at the back of her mind.
She continued with her studies, and swept triumphantly
through her final examinations. She was now an accountant,
though working as a disgracefully low-paid clerk in a butter
factory.
148
a
-six
Hugh Darcy leant on the bar of the Royal Duke at Juno,
depressed and not knowing how to handle it. Both gloomy
and gritty, he was ready to fly out of his skin at anyone. He
swept a snarl along the bar, inviting trouble. But the drinkers
were all country boys, crushed hats, broken teeth, skin like
roses. Not wanting to get into a scrap, they behaved as if he
were not there, genially shouting at each other above the roar
of the rain on the iron roof.
Life for Hughie had become a weary dream. He had
worked on one near-bankrupt station after another, his life
made wretched by fretful bosses, skimped food, the curse of
wet sheep. Three times he had been booted off properties for
drunkenness and insolence. He had been forced at last to take
on stump-grubbing at a mean farm south of Juno. Again he
had been dismissed. Same song, different verse.
Unemployed for three weeks, Hugh was now coming to 
theend of his cheque. He scarcely knew what to do, except
return to Trafalgar, his tail between his legs.
The talk in the pub was of slump, the coming bad times.
Men were being paid off all over town, the match factory
149


       bankrupt, most of the landowners in the district in hock to
the banks. The younger men believed a crash couldn't
happen in Australia. The older men recalled their Dads
talking about the calamitous slump in the nineties, poor
devils cutting their throats by the drove.
Someone stood in the half-open doorway, slicker 
streaming. The figure took off a collapsed hat, and slapped it
against a leg. Hughie saw it was a woman, hair chopped short
like a man's.
'Hey, any of you jokers want to drive me back to Mt
Yatala?'
'That you, Pal? Come into the dry.'
'Women ain't allowed in public saloons.'
'The hell with that. Come in and have a snort, keep out the
cold.'
The woman advanced, middle-aged, with a hooped back.
She held a bloodstained cloth to her mouth.
'You been fighting, Pal? What's the other bloke look
like?'
'I come into town to have me top teeth ripped out; been
giving me jip for weeks. 1 was a mug and had gas. Now 1 feel
real weird. Wouldn't trust meself to drive.'
She bolted for the door to spit blood. When she returned
the sunburn blotched her pale face like a map. The publican
gave her a brandy. She winced as she drank it.
'Ghost, that stings like nettles.'
'Camp overnight, Pal. The missus'll be glad to find you a
shakedown.'
'No, got to get home to the Boss, you know that. Ain't
there anyone here who can drive me?'
But it was horse country. Few boys had the opportunity to
150
learn to drive motor vehicles. They looked at her, 
sympathetic, and muttered excuses.
'Sorry, Mrs Biddle, going to the housie with me girl.'
'Don't know one end of a lorry from another, Mrs Biddle.
Real sorry.'
11 can drive,' said Hughie. She looked at him searchingly.
'You been grogging on, boy?'
'Only three middies. Ask him. What's in it for me if I get
you to Mt Yatala?'
'Here, fair go,' protested the publican.
'Not your business, mate. What's in it, missus?'
'What d'ya wantT
'A job.'
'You're on.'
'You'll have to show me the road.'
'Only one. It's about twenty miles.'
Motor vehicles were still comparatively rare. Hughie no
more thought of ever owning one himself than he thought of
flying. Still, he liked being around cars. Aside from illicit


       jaunts as a boy, he had practised driving station utilities. He
had a natural affinity for things with wheels, and soon got the
hang of their workings. But when he saw the tall grunting
monster, its headlights steaming and hissing in the rain, he
backed off. He looked around for the woman to tell her so.
She was vomiting blood and brandy into -a puddle.
'Christ,' she groaned, 'I feel crook. Get in, boy. If we don't
get a move on Second Creek will be flooded and she's a
brute.'
Hugh jumped in. Recklessly he shoved in the clutch,
stumbled around the gears, and the truck groaned off. The
thing was full of inexorable power. It stood high off the


       ground, its tyres were solid rubber. To wrench its steering
wheel around took strong arms and shoulders.
'How'd you manage the wheel, missus? Cow weighs a ton.'
'Used to it. We're coming to the first creek. Should be
pretty low still. Get into third and charge it.'
They roared through the water, the wheels slipped and
clutched at the far bank, and they lurched onto an unmade
road, running with water but still firm under the tyres.
'You ain't driven one of these big jobs before, eh?'
Hugh admitted he had not. She was calm.
'Then you're doing real well.'
Now and then she opened the celluloid side flaps to spit out
blood. It came whistling back at her, borne on the wings of
the weather.
'No worry. It'll all wash off in the rain, if we get stuck at
Second Creek.'
The rain swarmed over the landscape like an army. Hugh
could not see the road, just a few yards of mud and hurtling
water. All around were trees, a sopping amorphous cloud,
blacker than the night.
The woman kept up running directions. Change down
here, keep away from the left, there's a breakaway bank,
keep in first, we're coming to a hill, up we go, dead ahead,
lad, you'll be right now. On the flat, so let her out a bit.
In between times she rested her head against the clammy
celluloid, muttering with pain or disgust.
'Mouth feel bad, missus?'
'Could be worse.'
The air was full of wild cries, trees squawking, the surfy
roar of the low scrub flattened before the blast. They came
to Second Creek and stopped. The brown water lurched past.
152
Mrs Biddle climbed down and tried the depth with a fallen
bough. She returned, blinded with rain, to the truck.
'Too deep. I'm going to hoof it. You want to stay here?'
Hugh chose to go. The truck cabin offered little comfort.
He was already wet to the skin. He backed with difficulty and
got the vehicle partly off the road. The woman took a storm
lantern from under the wooden seat and lit it. She folded her
slicker and tied it on top of her head with its belt.
Hughie wondered if he should offer to pickaback her
across. In spite of her large hands and wrists, she was a small
woman. But she plunged ahead, holding up the lantern, and
floundered through. The water, up to Hughie's armpits, was
chill as death. It plucked his feet from under him and rolled
him like a log. A powerful hand seized his, he scrambled to
his feet and up the bank. The woman had hooked her other
arm round a tree.
'Come on, it's only three, four miles.'
Like drowning creatures they struggled along the road. The
wind dropped, the rain dwindled. The hills showed 
them

       selves against a lightening sky in sable domes, steeples,
and shattered dykes. Far away shone a spectral star. Mrs
Biddle gave a satisfied grunt.
'That's the homestead. The Boss has had them put a 
hurricane on the gatepost.'
She waved the lantern she carried. 'They'll be watching for
me.'
Hugh fell into bed and slept like the dead until seven, when
a gargoyle with a swollen shiny face awakened him.
'Yes, it's me all right,' she uttered with difficulty. 'Got a
chill in me gums or something. Tucker's ready. Boss wants to
see you when you're finished.'
153


       Hughie ate on the veranda. The tranquil day knew nothing
of storms. The homestead tank spouted white water into a
series of lesser tanks. In the smallest, a barrel, a black child as
big as a radish washed its face.
Hughie now saw he had come to real blackfellow country,
all mysterious glens and sudden rich pasture, paddocks turned
over in long glistening furrows for the frost to break up,
creeks where wild ducks showed upturned feet, quail toddling
in long files across the home garden. And over all the grey
wall of Mt Yatala, a broken ridgepole, falling abruptly into the
bush with the sound of waters, birds, wind in caverns, the
rattle of scree.
He went to see the Boss. He expected a big man, his shirt
tight in the chest and the shoulders, face like a butcher's
block.
Biddle lay in a basket chair. He was only half a man, one
leg gone, the other eaten with sores. His lungs were sick, it
seemed, for he spoke in a strained wheeze.
'Mustard gas,' said Pal.
She was not his wife, merely his pal. The countryside gave
her the title of Mrs Biddle because all respected and admired
her. But in fact there was a Mrs Biddle somewhere. Joe
Biddle had gone off to war in 1914, the fittest young man the
Army doctor had ever passed. He was newly married. A
dispatch rider, he was caught in a low-lying pool of mustard
gas, clinging to grass and harrowed earth like yellow steam.
He was invalided home. His wife would not or could not care
for him after he left hospital. Yet she would not divorce him.
Pal was years older than Joe. She had inherited Mt Yatala
station because her three brothers were killed in the war. But
she had always more or less run the property, anyway.
154
'Never had no trouble,' she said. 'It's either in you or it
ain't. The land, I mean. Brought Joe here to look after him.
Good air, good tucker, me on hand when he has a bad turn.'
She turned to the man, a look of such love upon her 
swollen face that Hughie turned his eyes away. He felt he was
spying.
'But don't you make no mistakes, boy. Joe's the Boss and
always will be. What he says goes. We breed shire horses, got
more blue ribbons than you can shake a stick at. It's Joe's
stud. Any credit goes to him.'
On the way down to the feedshed, stumping along in her
gumboots, she said abruptly: 'Them two black house girls 
don't you lay a hand on them. They're Joe's. I'm too old for
kids, have been since me and Joe hooked up. Them little boys
you see running around, they're Joe's. Mine too, come to
that. You got that clear?'
Hugh nodded.
'You got to live while you can,' she said, trudging away.
'Gawd,' said Hugh. He couldn't think straight. He longed


       to tell someone, Margaret perhaps, about Pal. He felt there
were lights shining about her. She'd never go sour on that
poor devil, never. Joe was right for life. And maybe she was,
too.
The sick man could walk with crutches. Hughie sometimes
heard his stammering footsteps moving slowly along the
veranda. He had a fearful, choking cough.
'He ain't got long to go,' Pal informed Hugh. She had a
curiously fierce, aristocratic gaze. He wondered what would
happen to her when Joe died, and could answer it. She would
carry on as before.
At Mt Yatala Hughie thought a great deal about the nature
155


       of love, not love like you saw at the pictures, or read about in
newspapers, but the real thing. The old Kilkers had it in a
way. He wondered self-consciously if he might ever find it
himself.
Margaret now, she was full of it. If he was knocked out of
life like Joe Biddle, she would look after him, be his meal
ticket somehow. He did not doubt she loved him. She had
cried when at last he had been permitted to make love to her,
she being worn down by pestering. He had been sportive,
laughing, tickling, caressing, excited. Her crying had spoiled
his style, but he could understand it. She was religious, she
didn't want to commit sins. He knew it was good for women
to be religious: it saved men worry after marriage, even if it
was a damned nuisance beforehand. But Margaret was
Margaret, a lovely armful, even if she was hung with medals
and scapulars. Somehow she had become part of his life, he
didn't really know how. He experienced a soft kind of 
feeling, homesickness for Margaret. Maybe that feeling was love,
too.
'Live while you can,' Mrs Biddle had said.
He saw a photograph of Corporal J. Biddle, AIF, in the
parlour. Hugh could scarcely believe it. What a beautiful
bloke! Straight nose, clean-cut mouth, the kind of smile that
made you want to take him away and shout him a beer. Curly
hair showing under the slouch hat.
'Twenty-two,' said Pal, watching him. 'A real dazzler,
wasn't he9'
Hughie was shaken. He often played euchre or poker with
the sick man but that day he could not bring himself to it. He
stared at his own youthful face and saw the marks of life
156
upon it, marks of the past years. He'd been passed over for
work, sacked several times, thrown bodily off properties. He
was getting a bad name amongst the trumps. Some of them
were already thinking twice before taking him on at all,
though they did not demur if Jer was with him.
'By God,' he said, 'I'll have to give the grog away.'
He had already lived a month without a drink, but he knew
it was because he had not left Mt Yatala. As soon as he got to
town the fatal desire for companionship and jollity would get
him into a pub, and that would be the end of him.
'Am I that weak?' he asked himself wonderingly. He could
not believe it, even though he was looking at the pattern of
his life for six or seven years.
Disturbed, he wrote to Jer that he was going on the wagon
before the bottle sickness got him. He was surprised to have
an answer from Newcastle, where Jeremiah had been sent to
have the operation on his feet.
, I wish it had been Sydney,' wrote Jer, 'so I could have a
look around. That bridge and the statues. I wish you were
here, Hughie. I feel a bit scared, hospital and all that. The


       doctor says there's a good chance I'll get to walk. I was
thinking the springtime it brings on the shearing, like the song
says. It would be good if you and me could go on the circuit
again. Like old times. But me walking around this time.
Thanks for the termer back again. I have nearly all the cash I
need now. The doctor is so interested in my case he is going to
do the surgery for a reduced fee. There'll be other doctors
looking on and learning. Margaret said she will pray for me,
and Mr and Mrs Kilker too. Mt Yatala sounds a real nice
place.'
157


       A
Hugh had an impetuous desire to be with Jer during this
ordeal. He could think of nothing else. He even went as far as
packing his swag. Then good sense halted him.
'Jesus, I'm a bunny. The kid isn't twisting my arm. He can
manage. He's grown up now.'
But he was anxious for Jer. He needed a drink. He knew
Pal had liquor in the house. She wouldn't refuse him a drink,
especially when she knew about Jer. He caught himself
rehearsing what he would say. He felt his face taking on
disarming expressions, wistful, anxious, rueful - and was
disgusted. He saw himself turning into a dispenser of charm
like Jer, smoodging, flattering, manipulating.
He spoke to Mrs Biddle, asking if Jer could come there
after his operation and recuperate.
'I know it's a lot to ask. I could move to the bunkhouse,
and have him with me. You needn't even see him.'
Mrs Biddle said that if the other station hands did not
mind, she was agreeable. Once Jer was on his feet he might
like to help in the kitchen, as the older house girl was
returning to a tribal marriage in the spring. Hugh was
relieved. He wanted to have Jer under his wing again. He
imagined Jer yarning with Joe Biddle, his music sounding
through the house.
The kindness of these people moved him. He wrote to Jer
telling of their good fortune. But, the operation over, Jer had
been moved to a convalescent home. He said they had broken
and reset bones, something like that, and he was in plaster.
But he'd come later.
Hugh felt as if a great load had been lifted from him. The
operation was over and, with luck, Jer would be able to walk
158
and lead a normal life. Maybe he would even get married,
have kids. Hugh felt deeply thankful, almost religious.
He was happy in those days. In that freezing air, with no
liquor and plenty of good food, he began again to feel strong
and optimistic. His body was springy with vitality. His letters
to Margaret became more expansive. He wanted to tell her
that he had been off the drink for many weeks; but she did
not know that he got on the grog. He was always temperate in
Trafalgar, mostly because he wanted no hassle with old John
Kilker. He had constant thoughts of Margaret. He wanted
her in his bed.
One day when Mrs Biddle was about to leave to pick up the
weekly stores, he said impulsively, 'Hang on a minute.'
He scribbled out Margaret's address and a few words.
'Send a wire for me, will you, missusT
'Something wrong, boyT
'Read it. You'll have to, later, anyway.'
She read: 'Missing you something terrible. What say we get
hitched on your birthday. Hugh.'


       Hauling herself up into the truck, she called, 'Catching,
ain't iff
The telegram was delivered at Trafalgar at midday. Flushed
and sparkling, Margaret flung down the yellow slip in front
of Eny.
'There you are!' she said with insolence foreign to her.
Then she broke into tears and blundered out of the room.
'She's surprised, too,' observed Josie.
'Oh, shut up!, said Eny. She was angry and defeated.
'That bangs Banagher!' she exclaimed.
159


       John was pleased, but wistful. 'It's desperate the way
daughters go away from a man.'
'She'd better not see the priest just yet,' said Josie. 'It's a
long while to her birthday.'
Those were the only words she said that could be construed
as spiteful. Josie had exciting news of her own.
'I'm opening my own business,' she announced.
They looked at her dumbly, their thoughts with Margaret.
She perceived it had been foolish to blurt out her plans so
soon after the arrival of Hughie's wire.
'An accountant's office,' Josie went on. 'I've leased that
empty shop in Hardy Street, the one where the dressmaker
used to be.'
Eny now paid attention. She said impatiently, 'What in the
world do you know about business, and you just a slip of a
girl?'
Her father said doubtfully, 'It's in my mind that a
businessman would not take his books to a young lady.'
Disappointed and chagrined, Josie went away. She was no
more chagrined than her mother. Eny was unable to conceal
her apprehension. Her heart ached at the look on Margaret's
defenceless face when she was sarcastic or cruelly prophetic,
but she could not stop her tongue.
'God help you,' she cried. 'You'll have six yowling kids
t
before you're thirty-four.'
'Aren't you the one to talk!' retorted Margaret, between
tears and heat.
Eny shook the stirring spoon at her. 'I had a man in a
steady job, a roof over my head and porridge in the pot.
Never mention your father in the same breath as that one!'
160
She reduced her daughter to a blubbering mass of 
conflicting emotions. The girl loved her mother and she loved
Hughie. She saw that if she settled for the one she must give
up the other, for the fireworks were beyond enduring. She
flew into a panic at the thought of it.
11 can't do without Ma,' she wept into John's sheltering
chest. 'But I'll have to.'
Eny had almost forgotten the compelling nature of young
love. But John remembered. There had been a small, fiery
brownheaded thing on the goldfield. Even yet when he
thought of her his throat ached, he felt again the insatiable
longing of more than fifty years before. She had died, that
one. But he remembered how he had felt.
In the privacy of their bedroom he reproved Eny.
'You've gone beyond all decency, the way you're making
Margaret unhappy,' he said. 'I won't have it, Eny.'
His wife burst out passionately. It was all for the girl's
good, she had to be shown once and for all that Hugh would
be useless as a husband. His chancy nature was written all


       over his face. Margaret had to be saved from a terrible
future.
'But it's what she has chosen,' he replied. 'And who's to
know it will be terrible? God's good.'
He hushed Eny's dozen arguments, he put his big hand
over her vehement mouth.
'I want no more of it,' he said. 'It's our girl's life, and if
she wants young Hughie to share it, that's the end of it. I'm
desperate ashamed of the way you're going on, and that's the
truth of the matter.'
Eny wept as if her heart were broken, and indeed it almost
161


       i
was, for John had never before spoken to her in such a
manner. She could not bear that he should be ashamed of
her.
During this weeping he did not comfort her. He said not a
word. At the end of it he demanded her promise that she
would accept the situation and cease barging at Margaret.
'And I want you to tell her you're sorry, for God knows
you've made wretched this time in which she has the right to
be happy.'
He called Margaret into the bedroom and told her what
had occurred. Margaret took one look at her mother's red,
fierce, repentant face, and threw her arms around her.
'There's no need for any apologies. I just want us all to be
happy like we've always been!'
'Ali,' thought John, 'you'd have done better to have
screwed a beg-pardon from her, my girl. She'll be off again if
we're not careful.'
But Eny turned her attentions to Josie, uttering tragic
predictions of failure and humiliation.
'We'll see,' said Josie equably.
The moment Josie had inspected the dressmaker's shop she
saw the possibility of being her own woman. It was as if
some calm presence took her by the hand.
Without trouble Josie had got the money she needed from
Aunt Alf. Examining the old woman's papers while she was
asleep was an act which did not rest easy on Josie's 
conscience. But what was she to do? She loathed Noel Capper
for putting her in a position where she had to do 
dishonourable things. More and more she realised the perils
confronting a young woman on her own. The factory 
manager made timid but determined overtures. They were timid
because his wife was a tartar, and determined because he
t
knew Josie needed her job. Josie used every method of 
avoidance known to women. The affair had reached the stage
when she felt sick in the stomach as he approached.
'I'll have to resign,' she confided to Alf. 'And work is so
scarce, especially for women.'
Alf deplored her niece's situation. She complained to the
priest and received a lecture on evil gossip.
'I think he's dotty, that young fellow,' she decided. 'Some
of them go that way, you know.'
Josie, dreaming aloud, said that if only she had E250 she
could set herself up in her own business, with typewriter,
adding machine and everything. She was well qualified and
not afraid of hard work. Then she laughed.
'But Pa has nothing like that. If he had, he'd lend it, he's
so good.'
Auntie Alf had looked upon her bank passbook as a 
goldmine. When the F-250 was given to Josie, she regarded the


       balance with astonishment.
'I thought I had more than that,' she said. She became a
little anxious and told Josie it was the F-300 she had given Jer
Darcy that had made the great hole. He had promised to pay
it back, but of course she would never ask for that.
'I hope there'll be enough to keep me for the few days I
have left,' she said to Josie. 'That's all I want. But there,
God's good.'
Josie was furious to hear about Jer, not even a member of
the family. But she kept her tongue between her teeth. In six
weeks she opened her office. It was bright and clean, flower
prints on the wall, steel filing cabinets.
'It looks like something you'd see in one of them 
photoplays about modern girls going to business and making
millions,' reported Eny. She didn't know whether to be


       1
164
1
shocked or admiring. 'That Josie, she's a goer, all right.'
Josic visited several religious organisations, telling them she
would do their books for nothing. They eyed her askance,
but could not resist. The work gave Josie an appearance of
industry while she waited for clients. The weeks passed and
clients did not come. Nothing of Josie's panic showed on her
face.
It was a stark world, built on social deceptions. As a girl,
she had been shielded from the vulgar and wicked. She had to
wait until marriage to learn about that. She had thought in
her trustful idiocy that during their long engagement Noel
had been as faithful to her as she to him. It was only when he
attempted to practise on her the gross arts he had learnt in the
town's several badhouses that she understood his values were
different from hers. The factory manager had persecuted and
harassed her, yet she was the one who had to resign.
Now she sat alone with her intelligence and skills in an
office, as good an accountant as any in Trafalgar, and
nobody came.
She went at last to the woman owner of the drapery shop, a
competent brusque personality, and asked if she might
handle the shop's books for a reduced fee.
The proprietor said instantly, 'I would never take my
business to a professional woman.'
'But why?' asked Josie desperately. 'You're a professional
woman yourself.'
The older woman did not know. She echoed tradition. Not
having an answer, she said, 'That will be all, Mrs Capper.
Good day.'
Josie began to feel reduced in health as well as spirits.
What did all this madness, this injustice, mean? She
considered ~er sister. Was it better, after all, to be like
Margaret, with no more thought for the morrow than an
animal? The idea stuck in her throat like a lump.
At Mt Yatala the hands went off in the truck to Chanadah,
the big woolgrowing property a few miles east of Juno
railway station. Chanadah always began and ended the spring
season with a shearing-shed dance and a campfire spud roast.
The Chanadah boss believed a little fun put everyone in a
willing mood.
Hugh loved to dance. He looked with ant I cipation at the
long woolboard that had been scrubbed and made slick with
candle parings. The walls of the cavernous shed were
decorated with pine boughs and blooming branches of acid
yellow wattle. The odour of fresh leaves, sweat, and hair
tonic filled the air, overridden only by the smell of the sheep
pens.
Hugh watched for admiration in the girls' eyes and found it.


       He knew how good he looked in his best blue suit, his black
dancing pumps, his cream waistcoat. He looked into their
shiny overheated faces and gave them the full benefit of his
blue gaze. He held them close until they wriggled and their
eyes grew hot, and whispered, 'Meet you by the bonfire at
supper time? Remember now.'
None of these innocents ever saw him again. Between
dances, fetching lemonade for his partner, he saw before him
a girl in a yellow dress. He saw the dress first; it had a
scalloped, gauzy kind of hemline that fell in points. The girl
in it had dark eyes, a flare of red in olive cheeks, and a fluff
of black hair.
'Thanks for the lemonade, Hugh,' she said, taking it from
him and drinking it.
'You've got your nerve,' said Hughie.
165


       She had a kind of high seriousness, a mitigated arrogance
that sat charmingly upon the face of one so young.
She set the glass down. Someone had, put another record
on the phonograph, a waltz.
'Come on, let's dance.'
In a moment they were gliding about the floor. The girl had
a melting grace.
'Better than last time?' she asked mischievously.
'You've got me beat,' answered Hughie. He reversed and
bore her away down the board.
'When you were at Butt's.'
Something flickered in Hughie's mind. 'Cripes, you're the
kid!'
She laughed. 'Eight years ago. Bridget Tookey, 
remember?'
If Hugh fell in love with Bids Tookey he also loved her. It
was his belief that this love would stay with him all his life,
and in this he was right. But in those early days she was an
obsession. They became lovers within a week, for Bids was
not one to hold anything back. She matched him in passion.
They took each other to another country, hectic as a dream,
and yet with more substance than the real world.
Hugh was in such a haze of delight he did not know what
to do. Peremptory, plain spoken, puritanical in her concepts
-of honour and truth, in no way did Bids resemble the servile,
cozening girls he had known. Nevertheless, he was in a rage
to gobble her up, to make her part of him for good and all,
have her looking out of his eyes.
On another level he was a little afraid, humbly marvelling.
In the dead of night he shed strange, exalted tears, the
overflow of worship. He sensed in the girl a mysterious
166
strength, a centre of gravity different from his own. Common
phrases came to him: 'She'll make a new man of me.'
For in truth he now despised the man he was, seeing 
himself as a nobody, governed by chance and self-indulgence, his
wastrel's life already, at twenty-six, showing on his face.
Unconsciously he turned to prayer, hammering at God or
whoever it was that ordered human lives:
'I've got to have her. I need her. She's all the world to me.
Let me have her!'
Bids took Hugh to her father, Steve Tookey.
'I'm going to marry him,' she said.
Steve eyed Hugh, bigger and tougher than he recalled him,
marks of dissipation on his face.
'it could be worse,' he said to his daughter.
Because of their family situation, Steve had always been
jealously possessive with Bids. By the time Hugh came into
her life he was aware of this bitter taste to his character and
tried to control it. He knew men, and he distrusted Hugh, yet
he liked him as a man. The boy could fight like a broken


       windmill; he had looked after that hoppy brother of his.
Steve knew that the time would soon come when he would
lose Bids and faced it with grim composure. He knew Bids
was strong, and consoled himself that she would be the
making of Hugh.
When he and Bids were private he asked, 'You been 
playing up with him?'
'Yes,' answered Bids, with her direct glance.
'You thought about what might happen if you fall? He's
the kind that clears out.'
'Hugh wouldn't clear out on me,' said his daughter. 'And
if he did, more fool him.'
167


       'It's not a nice situation for any girl to be in.'
'I'd have the baby and be damned to the gossips,' said
Bids. 'You'd stand by me, wouldn't you, Dad?'
Steve smiled.
'Then why would I need to be anyone's missus?'
Steve lumbered his painful leg out to the veranda. He sat
there thinking of Bids, thinking of youth, marvellous 
moonlight nights, that time by the lake with all the islands like
green butterflies, lone sunny valleys, and hidden ones made
for lovers, secret cracks in the earth. He had no right to blow up
Bids, or Hugh either, the things he'd done.
But it was different for a woman.
And Bids wasn't just a woman. She was his daughter.
He said to Hugh, 'I hear you've had the best of her.'
Hugh was abashed by these words. He blurted out 
admission.
'It's Bids's decision,' said Steve. 'But I know blokes and I
know you. You duck out on her and I'll find you and do
you.'
The whole of Juno knew about the love affair. Pal Biddle
came to Hugh, awkward and uneasy, and said, 'It ain't none
of my business, boy, and you're welcome to the truck to go
into town any time you can, but I can't help thinking of the
other girl, that Miss Kilker.'
, She turned me down,' said Hugh.
'That's all right then. You going in to fetch your brother
today on the midday? You take this blanket to wrap him in.
He mightn't be a hundred per cent yet.' She turned back.
'Sorry I spoke outa line, Hugh. The Boss and me have got
real fond of you since you came.'
Hugh, as he waited on the station platform, thought he
168
would have to come to grips with that problem sooner or
later. It seemed far away. The train appeared in a mist of
steam, and Hugh sprang forward joyously, anxious to see his
brother. Two passengers carried Jer off the train. He
propped himself up on his crutches. Hugh was aghast at the
look of him, yellow, wizened, his feet and lower legs in
bandages under thick socks.
'What's all this? You're not walking yet?'
Jer was silent, gesturing at his baggage. Hugh threw it in
the back of the truck and lifted his brother into the front seat.
They were scarcely out of the station yard before Jer began
weeping hysterically. The operation had not been a success.
He was worse off than he had been before.
'It's early days yet, you got to allow time,' protested
Hughie. 'Why, I suppose you even have to learn to walk, like
a baby.'
Jeremiah was distraught and ill-tempered. Everything 
upset him. When Pal teased Hugh with love madness when he
did something clumsily, Jer exclaimed, 'What's this? Who's


       Bids Tookey? What about Margaret that you're going to
marry?'
Mrs Biddle got it out of Hugh then. He said sullenly that
Margaret would break it off when she heard from him.
'Well, boy, ain't no one's business,' she said.
He was ashamed to have had his perfidy revealed, and so
created within himself a dislike for Mrs Biddle.
'Interfering old chook. Bloody cheek. Think I'll move on,
Jer. Got to get some bigger money together, if I'm getting
hitched. Going into town to see what jobs are offering.'
He secured a job cooking at Prospect Yards, across the
Queensland border. Bids saw the sense of his move, and so
169


       172
promised Mum when I was four. We've been through a lot
together, but Bids can't stand a bar of you, you give her the
creeps, and I can't have that.
'I'm over twenty-one,' said Jer. 'I can do as I like.'
'If you can manage without me to shepherd you,' said
Hugh with hard eyes. At least, Jer thought they were hard,
but in reality Hugh scarcely thought of Jer at all.
'What about Margaret? She's a decent sort; you haven't
done the right thing by her.'
'She'll get over it.'
Hugh had not done the right thing by anyone. Bids did not
know he was due to be married to someone else; the 
formidable old man Steve did not know either, and a good thing that
was as he would chop Hugh up for firewood. Or try, anyway.
Margaret at almost twenty-six was on the shelf, and Hugh
had put her there with his backing and filling. He was leaving
the Biddles in a hole.
But Hugh, gluttonous, gorged with love, thought of none
of these things. He was in another place altogether and cared
for nothing but himself and Bids Tookey.
Jer raved at him, begged, spoke eloquently of the scrapes
and difficulties they had survived because they had been
together. It was like listening to someone else's story.
'Yes,' he said, 'we've had a blazing good time, Jer, but it's
all over now. I reckon you ought to come to the Yards with
me. You don't want to be under no obligation to these
Biddles.'
Jer thought with a pang that he had spent his life being
under obligation to someone, and he'd better look out for his
future. He said he would remain at Mt Yatala for a while.
'Suit yourself,' said Hugh.
Not for a moment did Hugh think that Jer might tell Bids,
or worse, her grim father, that his brother was promised to a
girl in Trafalgar. Loyalty had been the climate of their lives,
the bond between them since Jeremiah's birth. It was a fact
of life. Jer had never, by word or hint, said anything to
Hugh's discredit. His escapades with girls, his drunkenness,
the many times he had been tossed out of sheds for 
slackness, the nights he'd spent in pokey, bombed out of his skull
- none of these had been mentioned by Jer, even when
Mrs Kilker, skilled at the task, interrogated him. He told lies
about Hugh by the hundred, grand tales of this and that, all
to the brother's glory.
But now things were different. Jer felt as he had never felt
before.
'My heart must be broken,' he thought, half in awe that a
thing which happened in stories and songs could happen to
him. He could not bring himself to say goodbye to his
brother.
Pal observed his downcast looks.


       'Don't fret, boy,' she said. 'And don't be too hard on old
Hughie. He has to live his own life.'
What about my life, cried Jer's heart. I got to live too. But
how?
'Me and the girls'll tidy up the kitchen,' suggested Pal.
'You go along and give the Boss a singsong.'
The Boss was familiar with very few tunes, mostly
sentimental ballads and marching songs from the Great War.
He liked to hear them played over and over - 'Roses of
Picardy', 'Hard Times', and 'Tipperary'. There was little left
of the Boss these days. He was not much more than a raucous
whisper and eyes that had almost relinquished life.
173


       Jer played the Stephen Foster songs he loved. Pal quietly
entered, and sat smoking and listening, now and then patting
the hand of Joe, who had fallen asleep.
Stephen Foster had been down on his luck, too, deserted
by everyone, dying alone in a gutter, in a cold wind. Jer saw
himself in that gutter, in that wind, and unexpected tears
sprang from his eyes.
Pal put her arms about him. 'It's Hughie clearing out, ain't
iff she said.
'Course it isn't,' gulped Jer. 'My ankles are murder. That's
what it is.'
'Long as the Boss and me are around you got friends,' she
said. 'And like I said before, don't you be too hard on your
brother.'
But the young man was hard. His sense of betrayal made
him ferocious.
Some time after Hugh left Mt Yatala, Jer wrote a long
letter to Auntie Alf.
Auntie Alf read it with consternation. Her hands shook so,
she had to put the paper down. She prayed for courage to go
on. Jer wrote soberly that he found it hard to resign himself
to being handicapped for ever.
'I had a dream,' he wrote, 'of coming to Trafalgar and
walking with you to Mass. But God knows best.' He went on
immediately to say he was worried out of his mind by Hugh's
goings on. He explained fully what had happened.
'I don't excuse Hughie,' he wrote. 'I just want to ask you
what to do. Do you think Margaret ought to be told about
this or noff He added, 'Please let me have your advice
quickly, because I want to do the right thing.'
Josie found Auntie Alf distracted to a degree. The old
174
woman did not know what to write to poor Jer. She gave the
letter to her niece.
'Do you think it's just a fly by night thing, Josie? Tell me
what you think. Because if it is, it would be best not to tell
Margaret. You're young like her, you know about these
things. Oh, the poor girl, looking forward to her wedding.'
Josie was distracted by worry. The bitterness of failure
permeated her whole body. Perhaps it was this that made her
take revenge on Margaret for her own unhappiness. But at
the time she believed she acted for the best.
'Of course she must know,' said Josie, going straight to her
parents' home and telling Margaret and her mother as they
sat at their dinner. Margaret turned as pale as death, her
spoon fell and splashed soup over the table. She looked to her
mother for help.
'I'll scrag you, Josie, God be my witness I will.'
The glitter in Eny's eye was frightening. Josie stepped
backward. From the corner of her eyes she saw the door,
which she could reach in one spring if her mother lost her


       head altogether. She felt she had been rash. She should have
told Margaret privately.
'Margaret ought to know,' she protested. 'You've never
trusted Hughie. Well, now you know you were right. And
Margaret's well out of it.'
Margaret gave a moan so loud, so ghastly, Josie's hair
almost stood on end.
'I might have guessed,' she said. 'His letters have been 
different for a while now. Skimpy. I'll kill myself,' she said.
Her mother caught her by the apron tapes.
'You'll do nothing of the sort. Sit down. Josie, make fresh
tea. Lock the back door. We don't want every nosey parker
175


       in the street to know. Stop that noise, Margaret. I won't have
your father upset by this.'
'He'll have to know,' said Josie, perturbed but still calm.
Eny shot her such a look. 'I'll tell him my own way.'
176
-seven
When Rowena heard the name of the fast little cat who had
got off with Margaret's sweetheart she felt a thump in her
chest. Then she thought, 'Aren't there Tookeys all over the
placeT Her second thought was a spring of hope that this
would be the end of it with Hughie and Margaret.
But these things vanished from her mind when Margaret
went entirely to pieces. When Eny saw the big cuddlesome
lump collapsed on her bed, crying night and day, her face
swollen and ill-looking, scarcely able to speak for grief, her
impulse might have been to shake the girl till her teeth
bounced in her head. But instead the tenderest love flooded
her, love like that she once felt for Kathleen, protective love
for this vulnerable child now hurt, it seemed, beyond repair.
'I'll see to it, my dotie, I'll get him back for you.'
'He won't come,' blubbered Margaret. 'Jer said she was a
peach.'
'Aren't you a nice looking girl, too?'
'I'll be twenty-six before you know it,' said Margaret, and
her woeful look added: 'And on the shelf already.'
'And who put you there?' thought her mother bitterly.
177


       1
'Isn't it just like that tripehound of a Hughie to tie you up for
years and then waltz off with a girl in her first bloom?'
'He's all the world to me, Ma.'
Eny knew very well this could be so. Like an arrow through
her heart she remembered her love for Steve Tookey.
Passion, disillusionment and loss came back to her from the
past. She was amazed to find herself weeping. Margaret
looked up at her mother's firm, often severe features and saw
them all awry. It was wonderful for the girl to see that her
mother could cry for her. Though she was mistaken in this
belief, Margaret felt supported, stronger. She was able to pull
herself together a little.
'She'll take no argurnent,' Eny reported to her husband.
'It's Hughie or no one. I've fear for her, John.'
The parents could not decide which way to move. John 
defended Jer, saying he had acted like a gentleman in leaving
Aunt Alf to judge whether Margaret should be told of
Hugh's betrayal. It was true, he added sadly, that Alf
should never have opened her big gob to Josie, knowing the
latter's wicked tongue where her sister was concerned.
'I'll bake that one's bread, too,' said Eny vengefully.
Josie moved through all the tumult with her secretive
eyelids lowered, her face composed. She had justified herself
a dozen times to everyone but none would listen.
'My conscience is clear,' she said. She believed it was. Josie
bore with equanimity her father's reproach, her mother's
crabbing. Aunt Alf's distress was another matter, but
Josephine thought she could assuage that in time. The deep
unease that fretted her came from Margaret's appearance.
All in a week her sister looked as she might look when old 
sallow, fallen away, ugly. Josie scoffed, told her she was
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better off without a philanderer for a husband, she was lucky
she had found out in time. But Margaret only said woefully,
61 love him, just like he is.'
The truth was that something was happening inside Josie.
The invincibility of her youth seemed to be crumbling. She
had always felt herself superior to the rest of them; she had
foresight, self-control, resolution. It came to her now,
confusedly, that she lacked something Margaret had. She
recognised that she had never loved Noel as he was. Perhaps
she had never loved people as they truly were.
She pushed these thoughts away.
, It's in my mind to go to Juno and see this girl's father,'
offered John. 'Couldn't I explain how it's all a bad business?


       14 For how do we know that Hughie told her he's promisedT
'That's it, of course,' said Eny, light in her eye. 'Very likely
this Bids Tookey is a decent girl. Wouldn't it be best then,
John, if I went myself and spoke to herT
She told John then that there had been a Tookey working
at Chanadah station when she was there, though perhaps this
was not he, seeing that one had been a footloose kind of boy.
John was relieved. He knew that such talk between fathers
often led to one or the other being knocked rotten, and he felt
he was past that caper. Retired now, he was happy enough,
but never quite feeling his old self.
How many years it was since Eny had boarded a train! 
Preoccupied with memories, she lent only half an ear to John's
cautions about not losing her temper, not being too hard on
the girl in case she was as innocent as a daisy. The Railways
had not changed the old dogboxes in the interval, the hard
seats, the clouded drinking-carafe with the water sloshing
around, the dust sifting everywhere like talcum - these
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       1
things brought back her flight from Juno as nothing else had
done in the years between. How desperate the anguish she
had suffered on that journey!
She had kept her marriage vow and never willingly thought
of Steve again. It had been hard at first but no trouble at all
later. Forty years and she had not raked over the memories of
him. She was not thinking of him now except as a shadow.
What she remembered was herself, as gormless as Margaret
for all her pride. She had allowed her love for Steve to
balance, life or death, on the edge of a postcard. Why hadn't
she stormed away to the lockup and got the truth out of him?
Her grief was impersonal, arising from her recognition of the
stupidity and fatally stiff necks of the young.
It was hot weather, rainless, the country the hue of a
honeycomb, hills streaming away into tarnished bronze. The
forest and the potato paddocks were replaced by thousands
of fruit trees. At every little station the platform was piled
with crates of plums and cherries. Rowena recognised
nothing from the two journeys of her girlhood. Even the
brimming rivers, green as stone, had shrunk to dark dribbles
in a waste of gravel and sand. She began to think that the past
had been a dream.
When she reached Juno she could scarcely believe what she
saw. The solitary siding, marooned in warm silence, had
become a tidy station. All around were houses, streets, shops
with pretentious gables and painted signs.
It was as if someone had rubbed a magic lamp. The town
as it grew had rushed towards the railway. The sweet valleys
where it had begun were now farmland. Now and then a
farmer made use of a fallen stone wall to rebuild the pigyard,
or felled a hoary fruit tree. On the original site nothing was
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left of the settlement but a roofless church with treeferns
crowding the nave.
The change, the passing of all she had known, unnerved
Eny. But she owed it to Margaret to do what she could. She
went to a hotel and, after booking in for the night, asked the
clerk if he knew a family called Tookey.
There was only old Mr Tookey and his daughter. They
lived close to town. Miss Tookey worked along the main
street in the Bank of New South Wales.
, Would it be Mr Steve Tookey, do you know?' inquired
Rowena. The clerk nodded.
The words 'old Mr Tookey' had shaken Eny, but she was
more shaken by the news that Bids was employed in a bank.
How could her simple Margaret compete with a smart young
business girl?


       And old Mr Tookeyl 'Why, Steve is no more than six years
older than myself,' simmered Eny, who thought of herself as
thirty-seven or thereabouts.
The anger did her good. With her mind settled, she went
downstairs and ate a robust meal. In her bedroom she 
examined the wardrobe to see if the last person had left anything
behind, washed herself from a jug of hot water, said her
prayers, and went to sleep, confident that a Mullins born
could knock the stuffing out of anyone behind a bank
counter.
In the bank next morning she was taken aback: she could
see no young ladies in sight. She asked one of the men if she
could speak to Miss Tookey. He frowned, saying Miss
Tookey worked in the office and could not come to the front.
Eny put on a tragic face, saying she had travelled a 
hundred miles. Since there was no customer in the bank, the
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young man said, 'Just for a minute, then,' and went to an
inner door.
The girl who approached the inquiry counter was puzzled.
'I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to. . . .'
Eny held onto the counter. She thought she was going to
keel over, for the girl, this Bids Tookey, was so like her
Kathleen they might have been sisters. If Kathleen had lived
she would have been like this, black curly hair, a dimple in
the creamy cheek.
The girl put a hand over hers. 'Are you all rightT
Eny nodded. 'It's just that for a moment you looked like
someone I knew.'
Rose flowed over the girl's face. She said eagerly, 'You
know my motherT
'I do not,' replied Eny, puzzled. 'It's about Mr Darcy I'm
here.'
Bids said, 'But he left for Prospect Yards some weeks ago.'
'It's important to me and to you that we have a few words
about that gentleman.'
Bids hesitated uncomfortably.
'I get off for lunch at midday. I'll meet you in the Windsor
tearooms down the road.'
Eny spent the intervening time in the church. It was a place
of gaudy simpering statues and banks of candles, but that
was what she liked. She prayed for a while, and then she had
a snooze, and very soon she heard the Town Hall clock strike
half past eleven. She went along to the Windsor and drank a
cup of tea while she was waiting. She had had a great start
when she saw Bids's resemblance to Kathleen but she had
worked it out while praying in the church. Kathleen had been
a sport in her family. She was one of the black Irish, with
large bow-shaped Spanish eyes, and a torrent of silky hair.
ii
t
1
She was the only Kilker with black eyes as far as anyone
knew. But Aunt Alf said she remembered a tradition that
their grandmother, hers and John's, was black-eyed, too. She
came from Galway, where the Armada ships were wrecked,
many of the seamen being drowned or murdered, but others
taken into Irish homes.
And Steve, too, had begotten this rarity, tall, slender and
airy on her feet, coming towards her now and looking so like
Kathleen Eny could have let the unsealed sorrow in her heart
out in a howl.
The girl had been thinking over the visit of the stranger and
did not like it. Eny could see by the set of her red mouth, the
way she kept her neck proud and stiff.
The waitress brought more tea, Bids all the time gazing at
Eny with a direct shining look.


       'I don't know you, do IV
'I'm Mrs Kilker, from Trafalgar. I'm that sorry I nearly
turned up me toes when I saw you first. . . .'
'Never mind that. What have you to say about Hugh
DarcyT
The girl plainly thought her as old as the hills, and maybe
astray in her mind into the bargain, but she was not giving or
taking anything on that account.
Eny thought it best to come out with it. 'That young hero is
engaged to my daughter and has been for some time. They're
to be married in two or three months.'
The girl made a hardy try at composure, even boldness. 'I
don't believe you. You're making it up. How dare you annoy
me this way?'
Eny thought her grand. She flew the red flag in her cheeks,
she came back fighting.
'Ah, girl,' she said, 'there's no need for me to lie. I can see


       how Hughie would tumble for you; I've not a thing against
you. But Margaret, she's taking it badly; her heart is broken,
the flesh is shrinking from her bones. Didn't I come here only
to appeal to you, not to make troubleT
As she spoke, she put in front of Bids the engagement 
pictures of Hugh and Margaret. Bids did not want to look at
them; she looked away and around the tearooms, she cast a
piteous cornered look at Eny herself. Then her mouth set
firmly, and she turned over the photographs.
'Why haven't they married then? All this time!'
'Didn't our man keep dodging. He's that class of fella.'
'These pictures don't prove anything. He might have been
engaged to your daughter for a fortnight, all those years ago.
He would have told me.'
'I'm asking you to give him up and tell him so.'
'On your word?' retorted the girl. 'Not in a hundred years.
I don't know you. You could be crazy for all I know. A
mischief-maker.'
'You ask your father if I ever laid me tongue to mischief in
my fife.'
'You know my father?'
'I do, and if you won't listen to me maybe he will.'
Eny slapped down some money and swished out. She
thought Bids would follow her and so she did, putting a hand
on Eny's arm, showing a glisten in her eyes.
'Please, they were all listening in there. But we have to talk,
get things straight. There's a memorial park along here; we'll
sit there. I'm sorry if I was impertinent. You gave me a
shock.'
She did not cry, sitting there near the War Memorial, so
smart in her short skirt, her shiny silk stockings and pointed
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shoes. She gazed at Rowena with eyes that demanded she
should deny the whole thing, go away, drop dead.
I I rather care for him, you know,' she muttered.
'I'd sooner you had him than Margaret, if the truth is
told,' said Eny sadly. 'It will take a sturdy woman to manage
that scamp. And she's soft. Soft as butter.'
The trouble was that Mrs Kilker had not said a word that
Bids's father had not used about Hugh time and time again.
The girl told herself she did not believe any of it, but she
did. She rubbed the base of her throat, which was hurting,
and said, 'I have to get back to the bank.'
'I'm that sorry to be bringing you such news,' said Eny
sincerely. 'I'm at the Royal Hotel for the next day or so if you
want to see me. Now, do as I ask, girl, and write to Hughie
and get the strength of it all, for your own good and
Margaret's.'
Bids was so distrait she could scarcely do her work. She


       longed to fly round to the Royal and examine those damnable
pictures again. Hugh with a glass in one hand, his other arm
round the shoulders of a pretty, bashful girl with untidy hair .
She was holding up her ring towards the camera.
'No,' she thought. 'I'll go home and see Dad.'
When she went into the kitchen, her father was peeling
potatoes. Bids, who was a quarter boy, came straight out
with it.
'Do you think it true, DaddyT
'I do.'
She spoke to him about it over supper and as she washed
the dishes. Steve said little. What could he say that would
make things better for her? She kissed him and went to bed.
Steve sat on the veranda in the cool darkness, smoking. He


       had not told Bids that Eny Mullins had visited him that 
afternoon.
Eny was so surprised when she recognised Steve Tookey in 0
the short old codger who opened the door that she blurted:
'God help us, Steve, you've got as old as Moses!'
'And a man would be looking at a chicken a long time
before he thought of you!' he retorted.
The interchange was so like those of many years before
that both burst out laughing.
Her visit had set him back, though why, after so long, he
could not tell. He had lost his place in time; the years had
come down in an earthquake.
He was not a well man; his body was full of small
distresses, his heartbeat had a stammer. Seeing Rowena again
had shaken him up. That was it.
When Steve Tookey had returned to Chanadah so long ago
his job was gone and so was his sweetheart. The lack of 
communication had not disturbed him; she was as ignorant of
letters as a blackbird. But not for a moment had he imagined
that she would not be waiting for him at the railway station,
ready to tear his ears off with fiery words. The mistress told
him the girl had taken the south train only a few days after
they had news of his jail sentence.
'She said she was off back to Sydney. Good riddance to
her. She had a big opinion of herself, that one.'
Eny's defection hit Steve on all sides. He was the one who
always left the girl lamenting. She'd run out on him, the
redhaired squib. His mates knew it was a comedown for
Leather, but they held off chiacking him about it. He took it
as if it didn't matter in the least. Easy come, easy go, he said.
Still, he felt bereft, as though something was missing.
He went back to his job as blacksmith's striker. Although
f
k
9
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i
1 v
he intended to move on in three or four months, he dallied.
Soon it was a year since he had seen Eny. In that time life had
changed for him, it had lost colour and reality. On slack days
he would sit outside the forge yarning with passing horsemen,
thinking, Why am I here? Who are these jokers? He couldn't
get up off his stern long enough to have a fight or go to a
dance. People said that a few months in pokey had taken the
sting out of Leather Tookey something woeful.
His friend Jim Oyster took him in hand. 'Is it Eny Mullins
you're fretting over? Because if so we'll find her somehow.'
But Steve could not truthfully say that was so. He had been
incensed that Rowena had left him no word, no sign, but his
anger had subsided into the indifference that now seemed to


       fill his life.
'Snap out of it before you take to the sauce,' advised Jim
Oyster.
He straightened himself and said in his official voice, 'I call
upon you in the Queen's name to assist me in a matter of the
Law.'
Steve laughed. But Constable Oyster meant it. In country
districts this was legal procedure.
'You bastard, Jim,' exclaimed Steve. 'A man has a right to
his own troubles.'
Constable Oyster took him to the courthouse to be sworn
in. He signed for a rifle.
'What's this forT
'You know Quilley's, up past The Narrows? Raving
bloody looney taken off to the asylum a few years back?
Well, them silly snots down at Sydney let him out last
month. I
It was raining as they rode out, and they moved into a
rainstorm thick as dense fog. It was fantastic stony country,


       gorge walls straight, flat like the walls of a house, spouting
waterfalls. They got the wretched horses through The 
Narrows, the single pass leading to the grassy uplands, and a
watery sun opened the landscape to them, the faded green,
antique highland rifted by pine windbreaks casting 
longlegged shadows. There they met Lyall, the neighbour who
had given the alarm.
He said they had not seen Mrs Quilley or the child for a
week. Just before that the wife had heard shots, though it
might mean only that Quilley had potted a rabbit or duck.
He, Lyall, had gone over casually the day after, and been
driven off by Quilley with a shotgun.
'He looked pretty queer, didn't say much, just "Get!" So I
got, and went down to report to you. Mightn't be anything,
of course.'
Lyall was not young but he was strong and willing, with big
hands and a body that the shirt went over like a cloth skin,
tight and breathing. Jim Oyster did not have to ask his aid; he
rode ahead of them. He too had a rifle in a saddle holster,
and a big ironbark waddy slung beside it.
They approached the farm. They saw no smoke from the
chimney. The place bore the signs of a property long looked
after by a lone woman -- rust, cobbled fences, things mended
with string and fence wire. The cows had been milked but
there was a dead dog on the end of a chain.
The constable gave the customary hail: 'Anyone home at
Quilley's?' 
Silence. He directed Steve to the back of the house. He and
Lyall approached from opposite sides of the front veranda. A
child's toys were scattered there, and a dish of blackened
potatoes with a peeling knife amongst them.
V
Steve kept to cover, moving cautiously past the chicken
pen. Amongst the bodies of a dozen hens lay Mrs Quilley in a
bloody apron. A pair of crows flew up as Steve drew near;
they glared from a dead branch.
There was the blast of a shotgun and chips scattered at
Steve's feet. A man had come through the darkness of the
back doorway into the sun. He carried a gun, not aimed,
resting across his arms. But his eyes were aimed, fixed in a
furious stare.
'Good day,' said Steve.
The sun ran up and down the barrel like quicksilver. The
man stopped. The two men looked at each other. Steve had
no idea what to do. He could only hope Oyster and Lyall were
coming through the house from the front. He knew this man
was an implacable enemy, not only of himself but the world.
Whatever had happened in his head had fixed it so that he
was never to bi~ won over by any human means.
'I'm Steve Tookey. Been out after rabbits.'
'Drop the rifle.'


       Steve did so.
, Now clear out, or I'll blow a hole in you.'
'Mrs Quilley all right?' Steve ventured. 'My old lady told
me to ask.'
He thought he could see movement behind Quilley but kept
his eyes from it.
Quilley was not forty years old, tall, with the tough wiry
body of a farmer. But something had gone wrong with his
face, soft and ruckled, anxious eyes small as pills. It was the
face of a sorrowful man.
Steve himself was in a strange place he had not been in
before. He looked at Quilley, scarcely breathing, not moving,
1*


       0
,11
not afraid but suspended in time. He thought afterwards he
had been waiting for death as though he, and it too, were
unreal.
The man began to speak of the monstrous grief of life, how
he could not allow his wife and daughter to continue in it. He
said the girl was only four, but she had suffered enough
already.
'She's under the house,' he said fretfully. 'I've put 
everything there to get her out, food, her toys, but she won't come.
She ain't had a bite for three days. I thought of firing under
- I know she's in the corner by the chimney - but I might
only wound her.'
He turned his attention to Steve, shouting that people had
taken him away three years ago, preventing him from looking
after his wife and child as was a man's job.
'They think I'm mad,' he said, amazed. He gestured to the
young man to come closer. There was only the gun's length
between them. Steve thought his last hour had come.
'Do you think I'm madT
He was from some English county. He pronounced the
word 'mahd'. Unexpectedly a manic humour seized Steve.
'Well, Mr Quilley, there's one sure test. They say that if a
man's mad his tongue turns black.'
A harrowing look of hope, fear and consternation passed
over the man's stubbled face. Steve knocked up the gun; it
exploded, blowing the top out of a nearby tree. At the same
moment Lyall and Oyster seized Quilley from behind. He
broke free, ran shrieking into the bush. They had to subdue
him with Lyall's waddy. All three men were aghast and
sickened, Steve most of all, for he had read the madman's
last look. Quilley had not wanted to be mad, but he knew
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4
that if he was sane he had murdered his wife and possibly his
little child.
'Poor cow.'
Though he could not hope to reach Juno before dark,
Oyster decided to take Quilley down to the town. He was
afraid the afflicted man might escape. Since Lyall was
familiar with the track, he accompanied him. Steve was left
with the task of burying the dead birds and the dog, and
covering Mrs Quilley. He did this, often calling the child
meantime. Mrs Lyall had come to help, but he asked her to
stand at a distance until he had finished his gruesome task.
'Her name's Evie,' Mrs Lyall said.
There was not enough crawl space for a man under the


       house. Both Mrs Lyall and Steve thought the child might well
be dead from exposure. It was early morning before they
heard some faint sounds, and midday before they coaxed her
out. The feeble filthy child could scarcely crawl. Her eyes had
the glazed blind look of a treed kitten.
Mrs Lyall was allowed to adopt the orphan. She was a wild
little creature, frightened of other children, passionately
devoted to her foster parents, terrified by the sound of guns.
When the Lyalls sold their farm and moved down into the
growing town of Juno Evie went to school. She became 
loving and high-spirited and the joy of her parents' hearts.
'Why don't you join the Force?' asked Jim Oyster of Steve.
'You handled that Quilley business pretty well.'
Steve thought he'd like it, plenty of action and change of
scene. But he failed to make the height. If there had been a
lack Of volunteers for the Force at that time he might have
scraped in with Oyster's recommendation, but it was the
terrible depression of the nineties, ruin and worklessness all
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       around, and there was no scarcity of fine big six-footers
hungering to get into police work. Still, Sergeant Oyster, as
he presently was, often called on Steve as a special. He
remained in Juno, beginning to look upon it as home, until
the Boer War.
He came through that lot without a scratch. When he 
returned Juno had put out arms in all directions but mostly
towards the railway line. The whole country looked 
astonishingly prosperous.
'Well, it's the twentieth century,' everyone said, as though
that had brought some variety of magic with it.
Steve called on the Lyalls. Evie was fifteen, a scraggy
delicious thing as shy as a bird.
'What a shame I'm so old,' he said jokingly. 'I'd marry
you tomorrow.'
'You're not too old,' she said.
Steve had had plenty of love in his life; women naturally
liked him. He did not try to charm them. He just had to look
around and there one would be at his elbow. He had never
seriously thought of marrying. Even Jim's domestic felicity,
his clutch of healthy children, had not made him conscious of
anything missing in his life. Yet seven years later, when Steve
was forty-three and Evie twenty-two, they were married.
Steve was lame, having been whacked on the kneecap with a
pick handle by a drunk and disorderly.
He worked in the local woolstores. To go home to Evie 
became the comfortable aim and design of each day. He loved
her, and yet it could be said that he did not fall in love until
his daughter Bridget was born. The dark-haired infant cast a
spell on him the mornent she opened her filmy blue eyes.
Those eyes swiftly became large and black, shining as water.
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9
She stared at him all the time; it seemed she too was besotted
wIth love. Evie used to laugh at the pair of them.
Evie was reasonably happy for some years. At first she was
busy. The house and garden, and then the baby, took up her
whole time. Bids was two before Evie realised that for a long
time she had not really thought about anything beyond her
daily responsibilities. The kind Lyalls had educated her as far
as they were able. Mrs Lyall had an idea that every woman
needed to be able to do something to keep herself. She taught
Evie needlework and simple dressmaking.
'No woman ever knows whether she will be left a penniless
widow,' she explained. At great sacrifice, she and the father
gave Evie a sewing machine for her fourteenth birthday. Evie
was disappointed: she had wanted a bicycle. But she was a
tactful and obliging child; dutifully she learnt dressmaking.
Steve could not understand Evie's fits of restless 
abstraction. Everyone had said a woman settled down when she had
a child. Evie was the same as she had been when he first


       courted her. She had fanciful ideas. She suggested that they
should move to Sydney, where he might find a more 
interesting job. There would be better schools for Bids, more
places to see, more fun.
'What's the matter with Juno?' he asked, baffled.
She was not able to say. It was not till Bids went to school
that Evie realised she was in bondage. She looked at other
women, how they had become identified with their 
housewifely functions. The occasional woman who had assumed a
dominant position in the family was called a battleaxe, and
often was just that. Evie wondered what the battleaxe had
been like when a bride. She knew that married partnership
was a possibility; her own intelligence told her so. Also, she
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       had evidence from her foster parents, the happiest, most I
mutually considerate people she had known.
She asked Steve if he would mind if she got a job. He was
fearfully affronted.
'Do you know what other men would say about me?' he
growled.
When she pleaded that whatever they said could not, in
reason, be true, he retreated into a dark silence. She saw that
the good opinion of his peers meant more to him than any
desire of hers.
However, she tried to persuade him. For the first time he
shouted at her. He thought she was behaving badly in not
believing what he believed a woman should be.
Nevertheless, Evie might have settled down and made the
best of things if she had not been so sexually frustrated. She
was in physical and nervous distress almost all the time. Her
foster mother was now dead; she had no other kin. She was
not one to make close women friends; she felt she could not
consult any of her aquaintances. The few times she had tried
to speak about her feelings with Steve he had looked at her
strickenly, as if she had shouted obscenities. He would not
answer her pleas; he slammed out of the house or pretended
to be asleep. She understood that their sex life was a subject
she could not bring up with her husband. There were other
subjects, too, that Steve refused to discuss - death, the
British in Ireland, whether there would be a war with
Germany.
Timidly, after much thought, she asked the priest in 
confession if there was any book she could read to make her
marriage better. He barked at her and gave her a Rosary as
penance, to purify her thoughts.
The doctor also was very offhand, the implication being
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14
that there was something physically amiss with her. He made
veiled statements about inflamed organs and the possibility
of a hysterectomy.
She saw plainly that she, and possibly many other wives,
were looked upon as she herself looked upon the old tomcat.
Like his, her unruly instincts were in some indefinable way
wrong, disgusting, and a nuisance.
Steve was not only much older than herself, for which she
could not blame him, but he knew little about women. His
early reputation as a ladykiller, which had so bothered her
foster father, took on new meaning. She imagined his leaving
a long line of frustrated, maddened girls behind him. Poor
things - who could have talked or complained about such
things in the nineties? She was not permitted to do so even
now. Even while cursing his ineptitude, she loved him all the
more; he was so honest, so manly, such a doting father to


       their child. Was it his fault that he was as innocent and
unskilled as a ram? Possibly most men were.
'Yes, but he isn't a ram,' she thought. 'He ought to wake
up to the fact that he isn't.'
She got out her sewing machine and began to sew
children's dresses and other small items for money. The
neighbourhood women eagerly connived at secrecy. Their
husbands were similarly pigheaded about their earning any
money except by selling eggs and chickens. The husbands and
Steve thought Evie sewed out of neighbourly kindness and to
fill in her time. Slowly she scratched together a few pounds.
She did not truly know why. She told herself she had to have
a little money of her own in case some day she became a
widow. It was a long time before she faced her secret: that she
needed money, however little, if she ever hoped to be free.
During her married life there was the feeling that she was in


       A
a lightless, confined space. Frantically she longed to escape,
but if she did a person whom she loved woruld hurt her. She
recognised the symbolism. The Lyalls had never kept from
her the circumstances in which she had come to them. Once
again, it seemed, a man whom she loved had driven her into
confinement. Yet if she came out she would have to face an
unknown, frightening future.
When Steve found out that she had been charging for her
dressmaking he was outraged. Glaring at the machine, he
said, 'I'll put an axe through it.'
'You do,' she retorted, 'and I'll poison you.'
Her face was crimson, she felt the whole world was 
crimson; a fine internal shaking made her wonder if she were
going to die or start screaming. Steve regarded her with 
consternation.
'You sick or something?'
'No, I'm not sick, I'm unhappy. I've been unhappy for
years. I want a separation.'
Steve was thunderstruck. He was so knocked over he said
something that was not truly in his mind.
'You're as mad as your old man!' he jeered.
Children had sometimes said this to Evie when she had
frolicked more capriciously than usual, and it had gone over
her head. When Steve said it, it did not. She was wounded
fearfully. Yet the pain of the wound hardened her resolution.
Before that she had been half playing with the idea of
leaving her home. It had been a game to comfort herself.
Even now she was full of apprehension. Could she really look
after Bids and herself, alone in a city? She had a womanish
hope that Steve would give in, that he too would fear being
alone.
X
,- i
i
He did not argue with her, but turned away, half laughing.
She felt the impact of his derision.
'Bids and 1 will leave at the end of the week,' she said
furiously.
'Bids will stay here. As for you, bloody well go if You wish.
lIrn finished with you.'
Bids was very perceptive. She had long ago given over 
crying when she heard her parents arguing. But it still made her
feel sick and weak. She went out to the kitchen now and
asked, 'What's this?'
Her mother told her they were going to Sydney.
'Without Dad?'
'Yes.'
'Then 1 won't go. I'll stay here with him.'
It was the crisis of Evie's life. She looked at it carefully,
though all in a flash, and she saw that this was a matter Of life


       or death for her. She argued with neither the girl nor her
husband.
Bids went with her to the station. She felt as if an 
earthquake had happened to her. Evie felt the same way.
'I'll send for the sewing machine when 1 have a place to
live.'
'I'll look after it, Mum.'
'Queer this, isn't it? Me going away, 1 mean. I'll write to
you, I'll send you a postcard.'
It seemed to the mother that all Bids's soul was in her dark
bright eyes. The girl's face was white. All at once she looked
spindly and gawky.
'Oh, Lord, 1 must be mad, like he said,' Evie suddenly
sobbed.
Bids said nothing. Not waiting for the train to Pull out, she


       walked away. The girl was equally devoted to mother and
father. As an infant she had sometimes sat sobbing between
them, unable to make up her mind which one to run to.
Steve was fifty-five. Jim Oyster, looking at his friend, saw
a historic thing happen. Leather Tookey, the unbeatable, the
good-humoured, the leg-puller and joker, became an old
Irishman. He was so like Sergeant Oyster's own father it was
unsettling. The flesh dried and tightened over the bony
frame, built for hard work. The thick brown hair turned into
a grey scruff like a terrier's. But the face was heraldic. It had
not only belonged to Oyster's father but to other men 
middleaged when he, Jim, was a child. They were men born of
famine mothers. Their lives had been little beyond bitterness,
hunger and rage.
Here was Steve Tookey, escaped from Ireland as a youth,
leading an entirely different life from that forced on the old
Irishmen, and yet he had the same face. A winter face with
bleak, keen eyes, protruding cheekbones, lines cut with a
knife from nose to mouth.
Jim Oyster wondered if that face were his destiny likewise.
He took to staring into his shaving glass. But sedentary life
had inflated him. It had turned him into a mudguts, and he
had a mudguts' face.
Steve Tookey was now foreman at the woolstores. He
became despotic to the point where the men looked forward
to his retirement. It was probable he would have been
tyrannical with Bids too, if the girl had been of another
disposition. But she stood up to him like a Trojan. Gradually
they became not father and daughter but mates, constant
companions. Each knew what the other was thinking or
198
A
9
A
4
about to say, and often answered it. Bids grew up knowing
more about men from a man's point of view than other girls.
She had a boyish way, too, very blunt and uncomplicated,
devoid of the obliquities of women. She rarely caused Steve
anxiety, and when she did it was not her fault.
There was one occasion when she was twelve. The school
had a bush picnic, and Bids and one of the boys became lost.
They were lost for two days and a night. That was a bad time
for Steve, unbearable torment. But almost as bad was what
came after the lost pair were found; the boy boasted about
Bids and his own prowess. Steve heard the gossip, which ran
like a scrub fire about that little town, and was angry to the
edge of frenzy. He was in a dilemma. The boy was too young
to be thrashed. He had no father whose face Steve might have
rearranged. He went to the parish priest. There was a tough
one in Juno then, a chaplain in the late War. He had a face


       spattered blue with shot, and a temper like a tiger.
He advised Steve man to man. The next Sunday Bids and
Steve went to Mass. The girl was pitifully humiliated by the
looks she'd had, the things people had said to her. She heard
the whispers as she and her father walked down the aisle, but
no one would have guessed it from her expression. The 
congregation then saw that Steve had his boxing gloves slung over
his shoulder. As the pair seated themselves, the priest swung
round on the altar. There was no sound in that church save
the starlings tick-tocking about on the iron roof.
The priest said, 'There has been wicked gossip in this
parish. Much damage has been done to an innocent girl and a
respectable family. Let each one of you know that every man
or boy over seventeen who repeats a word of this gossip will
199


       200
1
be the business of Steve Tookey. As for the women and 
children, they are my business, and their names will be read
aloud at each Mass until Christmas.'
He then preached a roaring sermon on calumny, slander,
backbiting and such things, glaring all the time at the boy
who had been the cause of it all and his poor weeping mother.
About this time Hughie Darcy, a station hand out at Butt's
place, took her to the school dance. He had given Bids 
courage to face all the trouble she had at that time. When she grew
older she knew his action had just been a whim, a bit of fun.
But she remembered gratefully.
Yet, well as she understood her father, Bids made a 
mistake when her mother returned to Juno. Evie had kept in
touch with Bids. Steve never asked the girl how her mother
was. He had not troubled to get a judicial separation, and
neither had Evie.
Though these things were never spoken of, Bids knew that
her father did not hate her mother. He simply could not see
where he had gone wrong. As Bids grew older, and began to
feel in her own body clues to what the young Evie might have
felt, she thought she understood why her mother might have
left home.
When Evie first went to Sydney she had a desperate time.
She found a job as finisher in a dressmaking s*. It was little
better than a sweatshop, but it paid her rent. She could
scarcely afford to eat, but one day it occurred to her that her
thinness made her appear more elegant and well-bred than
before. She was a pretty woman, not young, for she was then
thirty-six, but she had a peerless country complexion and a
twist of dark hair. Resolutely she tried for positions in the big
shops, and eventually was taken on at a toiletries counter.
4
1
~laquill~i,ye was still considered fast and theatrical, but 
lipaix c, ro  nd face cream sold well. On her own skin Evie
uge a
- and glycerine, but she lied charmingl~'.
ii~,cd onIv rosewatei
The toilet goods and perfume buyer found her pleasing.
One thing led to another, and three years after her departure
from Juno she owned half shares in a tiny dressmaking shop
in King Street. She could see that before long she would be
making a comfortable living, and set her sights on buying her
partner out. Her personal business with him had already
lapsed. Evie pined for her daughter. She felt she could afford
to send the girl to college. Or she might care to train in the
beauty business. Evie knew what a future there was in that.
In Juno Evie went unobtrusively to a hotel. That was a year
for wearing velvet-spotted veils, conquettish and concealing.


       But she had no need to worry. There was no one in the hotel
she knew. The town had grown enormously; there was even a
picture theatre. Evie rested in the hotel until it was time for
Bids to leave the convent school she attended. She waited in
the shadow of trees until she saw Bids emerge. Even in the
lumpy serge tunic, the black woollen stockings and heavy
shoes, the grace and beauty of her child were identifiable.
The mother realised then how much she had needed her
daughter. She called the girl, but was unable to speak. It was
Bids who held the fragrant familiar stranger in her arms and
comforted her. They talked for a long time. Evie asked Bids
to come back to Sydney with her.
'Not now, not this minute, not till you're sixteen if you
wish. 1
Bids knew no other way of answering except to speak her
mind. She seemed cruelly outspoken to Evie.
'No, 1 have to be with Dad. He means so much to me.'
'Don't 1 mean something to you too?'
. 1.
201


       'Yes, of course you do. I think about you a lot. You mean
something to me, but I don't know what it is. Dad is the
person I live with: that's what he means to me. And now he's
getting old he needs me.'
Evie returned to Sydney. Bids told her father of the visit.
She thought Steve would be delighted and proud that she had
chosen to remain with him. But instead he broke down for
the first time in her life. She was aghast. Later she asked him
why he had cried.
'I think your mother wants to come back to us. She was
only sounding you out.'
'Would you have had her back?' Bids could not believe it,
even when she saw her father's expression. The mystery of
these grown-up people! Not for a moment did she believe
that her mother wanted to return to Juno. How could he
possibly think that? It occurred to her that her father was
getting a trifle unworldly. She looked at him critically. At a
pinch he could have been her grandfather. Still, he was the
best man in the world. She became more protective towards
him, a little domineering. In those years after she turned
sixteen she and her father were closer than ever.
Bids finished her education with a commercial course, and
began to work in the bank. She was much admired and 
constantly courted by Juno's young men; one by one they fell in
love with her and one by one they slid away. Bids was too
blunt for them. She knew what they were thinking, and did
not hesitate to tell them they were wasting their time.
Steve watched these courtships warily. In his heart
jealousy was waiting to come to the boil. Bids saw her
friends of twenty and twenty-one marrying, and it did
not disturb her at all. She had confidence that
202
1
somewhere there waited for her the perfect hus
a frIend like her father, the lover for whom she was
if he did not come along she'd manage to make a 1
her own.
'I'm not crazy keen to get married,' she told her
'I'll not take second best for anyone.'
'How did they come to meet, her and Hughie?' asked old
Rowena of old Steve.
'At the Chanadah shearing-shed dance, last spring,' he
answered shortly.
'Chanadah!' marvelled Eny.
The despotic-looking old man suddenly burst out: 'Why
did you run out on me like that? It wasn't the decent thing to
do, Eny. A man cops a batch of trouble and you run like a
cur.'
Eny looked at him sheepishly. 'I did, that's a fact. I was
nearly off my head with worry about you, and the missus
threw me out. But what about my postcard? I sent you a


       postcard from Trafalgar, saying I'd come like the wind if you
wanted me.'
The grief of that old happening came over her suddenly.
Her eyes filled with tears. 'Never a word did I hear ever
again.'
'I got no postcard,' he said. 'Never.'
She looked at him dumbly.
'Did it go astray or what? Who wrote it for you?'
Eny told him. She felt an old woman, and a feeble old
woman at that. She sat down. He made her a cup of tea but
the cup rattled against her teeth.
'It would all have turned out different, Steve. And Bids
1
203


       1
would have been my daughter. But something went wrong.'
Not that I don't think the sun shines out of John, and my
kids are the world's best, she thought. But something went
wrong. And here's Steve, the core of my heart for so long,
handsome as a hero, an old cranky limping man.
'Who would have guessed it, Steve, that we'd get old like
everyone elseT
'We made a desperate fine couple while it lasted,' he said
ruminatively.
Rowena drank her tea, spoke awhile of her children, those
who had lived, those who had died.
'My missus run out on me, years ago.'
'I'm real sorry, Steve.'
She gathered up her handbag and rose.
'Will you see to it that your girl gets it straight with Hugh
Darcy?'
For a moment the old fire came back into her eyes. Steve
had a moment's vision of how she had looked, how he had
looked; he felt a cruel pang in his breast.
'The vagabond!' Eny said. 'Two fine girls and both crying
their eyes out over him.'
'Bids won't cry,' said Steve.
'That's all you know, you old fool,' thought Eny as she
walked back through the heat. The hotel was airless. She
undid her corset and lay down.
Her head was stuffed with memories, anxieties, fears that
she had failed. Thoughts flew in and out like flies before she
could give them attention. The bitterness of Steve's voice!
How had it happened, the calamitous change in his body and
face? Age came, God knew, and none could stop it; but there
204
i
1
X
was more to it than age with Steve Tookey. He was as glum as
a bear. A hard, disappointed man.
She remembered young Jer singing 'The Kerry Dance'.
Didn't that hit the nail on the head! Time goes by and the
happy years are dead, and one by one the merry hearts are
fled. Eny put her hands over her ears to shut it out. 0 the
days of the Kerry dancing, 0 the ring of the piper's tune. 0
for one of those hours of gladness, gone alas, like our youth,
too soon.
The maid knocked on the door.
'Young lady left this message for you, Mrs Kilker.'
Eny opened it. As the years had gone by she had learnt to
read well, though she was still shaky with the writing.
Bids had left a brief note. 'I've wired him at Prospect
Yards to come back here at once to straighten things out.
Bridget Tookey.'


       Eny shook her head with admiration. Wasn't that just like
the girl to command the double-dealer to come galloping
back to Juno to face the music? Margaret would have gone to
Prospect Yards to plead for the truth, or written him a letter
full of tears and prayers. But Bids, she was the one. 'Come
back here, ye blaggard,' said Eny with spirit. 'Come back and
give me the truth of it.'
She hastened downstairs to the desk clerk. He got her a
seat on the midnight mixed, and some time in the lovely
summer dawn she arrived on the deserted platform at
Trafalgar. She told the yawning stationmaster she'd leg it
home, and someone would come down for her suitcase later.
It had rained within the last two days. On the golden hills
already showed a ghostly green. Hughie had showed her how
205


       the infant grass hid itself in the dry roots of dead clumps until
it was strong enough to face the sun. Hughie knew a few
things. Perhaps, with the nonsense knocked out of him, he
mightn't make such a bad husband for Margaret. She
strolled down the empty main street. A huge black sow raised
her snout from the Chinese greengrocer's rubbish tin and
pointed her ears at Eny.
'Get on with it,' said Eny. 'Your business is your own and
so is mine.'
John was asleep. He awakened to find Eny beside him and
had a fit of joy.
'Didn't I miss you, my dear! The days were all a week
long.'
She told him what had occurred.
'And this Tookey, the father, was he the same man you
knew long agoT
'Ah, a different class of fella altogether,' she said.
206
eight
Shortly after Hugh's departure from Mt Yatala, Joe Biddle
had died. Pal shrivelled. Her rough wiry hair lay flat and
cottony. Only her man's hands remained powerful and
impressive.
'You'll stand by me, boy?' she entreated Jer. Joe's funeral
was on a blowy day, the air full of yellow dust and tattered
dragonflies. Not being able to stand, Jer sat on the 
gravedigger's barrow and sang 'Nearer My God to Thee'.
'Now sing Joe's song, Jer,' said Pal. 'That one you played
one night, and he said that was him all over.'
Jer shot a look at the parson's pursed, inquiring lips, but
he sang it just the same.
'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard limes, hard times, come again no more!
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door,
Oh, hard times, come again no more.
But those in the crowd knew that hard times had come
again. They said Joe was well out of it, him being sick. He
207


       had done his duty for his country, but it looked as if the
country soon would not be doing its duty by anyone, let alone
those such as Joe had been. A monstrous shadow hung over
the nation. The people looked at it fiercely. They recognised
its menace but not its identity. It had come mysteriously from
overseas, and the servile Government had allowed the 
invasion. How could hard times seize a sumptuously rich 
country like Australia?
Jer sat with Pal all night. He besought her to cry.
'No good holding it in, Mrs Biddle. I know about things
like that. Just you listen to that housegirl. She knows what's
natural for a woman who's lost her man.'
The housegirl Kitty sat out in the dew, letting loose long
howls with the precise quality of music. Her sisters in the
desert would in the same circumstances rip their breasts and
arms with stones.
'Don't you leave me, Jer. I'm in a bad way.'
She drank herself into a stupor. Jer sat with her, huddled
by a dead fire, until it was dawn. He experienced true grief
for Mrs Biddle. It was of the same quality as his own. Hugh
had deserted him and Joe Biddle had gone off and left her.
He wept for Pal and himself.
But there was the other thing, too. Jer had misgivings
about his letter to Aunt Alf. He had wanted to stir up
trouble, not to let Hughie get away with it. But what trouble,
where? Hugh might come raging back and tear his head off.
Worse than that, he might never see or speak to him again.
Jer examined all the possibilities. Aunt Alf was a holy old
lady. She wouldn't tell Margaret. But she might tell her
brother, Mr Kilker. Or would she write to Hugh? But she
didn't know where Hugh was now. Jer was in torment. He
208
had to know what had happened; he would have no peace
until he did. Face to face with facts, he could produce some
ingenious story exonerating himself.
'Oh, dear God,' prayed Jer, 'why did you let me do it? I
didn't really want to. Make it all right for me now, amen. I've
had enough to put up with,' he moaned. 'I don't want any
more.'
He didn't know how to tell Mrs Biddle he must return to
Trafalgar, especially now when she needed him. After a week
or so he blurted it out. She said not a word, but he knew
she was bereft. He gabbled out the truth, blaming his
impetuosity.
'You did a wrong thing there, Jer,' agreed Mrs Biddle.
'You better see what you can do to fix things. And, later on,
you come back here. There'll always be a bite and a bed for
you here.'
In Trafalgar he got himself into an obscure boarding
house. He thought he'd lie low and think things out. He
heard no gossip in the town. He was not functioning in top


       gear. His money was running low. He would have to write to
Hugh at the Yards and tell him he had reached his hard times
sooner than other people.
He continued to write to Mrs Biddle as he had written to
Aunt Alf, pouring out his thoughts, his ambitions, his dire
disappointment that now he would never walk. Pal returned
terse letters about the horses, the weather, Joe's grave
looking a treat, come back soon. One day her letter contained
a telegram. Jer read the telegram first: 'So you put me in.
You're wiped. Hugh.'
Nervously Jer took up Pal's letter. She apologised for
opening the wire. 'I thought it might be bad news and
209


       perhaps I should try to get you on the phone. I'm real sorry.
Jer was in a panic. He had lost everyone. He swung himself
round to Auntie Alf's house. He had to know what had 
happened after she received his letter.
When Hugh found the telegram from Bids on his bunk at
Prospect Yards, he had a feeling of disintegration. The other
men moved around him like shadows. His thoughts centred
on Jer. Who else could have told Bids about Margaret?
He went to the boss. 'I'm shooting through.'
'What forT
'Personal.'
The man blasted him, told him he'd never get another job
in Prospect Yards, leaving them in the soup this way.
'Too bad.'
He sent Jer a wire from the railway station telegraph 
counter. He did not intend to see his brother.
In a state of intense agitation, Hugh travelled southwards
over the Queensland border. The belt of the wheels rattled his
very brain. The first day was breathlessly hot, the sun boring
down from aluminium skies. Hugh's thoughts were like 
veering winds. How, when, what did Bids know, what did she feel
about it? He could not lose her; his life would be over.
He arrived at a time when Bids was at work. Hugh dropped
his swag amongst the trees, kept an eye on the house. The old
man, her father, sat in the shade on the veranda, podding
peas. A stubborn, selfish, possibly jealous old man, not
wanting his daughter to marry, he had hidden his feelings for
civility's sake.
Hugh slept a little, exhausted by travel and anxiety. The
cooling shadows alerted him. He saw Bids turn in at the gate.
'Here I am,' he said.
With love he saw the moistness of sweat on her brow and
neck, under the tied-back hair.
'So I see,' she said. 'Come inside.'
Three days later he boarded another train, going south to
Sydney. In the extremity of loss he thought again of the
talismanic city, where even his mother might have been
happy. He wanted to submerge himself in noise, bustle,
ceaseless traffic. He needed to be with strangers.
'I can stand it,' he told himself. 'I've stood worse.'
But the pain was so fresh and cruel he could not bear the
journey, the people around him, the joggling familiar 
landscape. Suddenly he leapt up and swung down his swag. He
left the train at a wayside station called Gaines. There was a
short main street, a garage, a timber mill rasping and
thumping peremptorily in the background, several hotels. He
crossed the road and entered the first he saw.
The next day, awakening on a thin mattress, a flyspecked
window glaring daylight into his eyes, he lay for a few 
moments in drowsy contentment, nothing in his mind at all. He
was in pain. In truth, he felt as if a horse had rolled on him.


       There was not a muscle or ligament or bone that had not been
jerked, stretched or bruised. Nevertheless, for half a minute
he had not a worry in the world.
He heard the timber mill's knock-off whistle, became
aware that the light was blackly barred, and thought without
interest: 'I'm in the cooler.'
Hugh had little memory of the events that had put him
there. He could remember a big looking glass, gold printing
on it, crashing down, bits flying everywhere like stilettos.
Himself slugging away toe to toe with a beefy fellow wearing


       a flat woolly cap like an omelette. He had a cloudy idea that
cap had something to do with the brawl. Getting doused in a
horse-trough, pulled out, punching a policeman. His face felt
as if it were scalded, his neck was surely broken.
He managed to crab over to the bucket. He heard locks
clang, footsteps. His eyes would not focus on the sergeant.
'Get this down yer, son.'
'What am I in forT
'Bitta fun. Go back to sleep.'
The sergeant was a mild man; he looked down the list of
charges and whistled. The stranger had no money for bail.
The sergeant thought he might well have had plenty before
the donnybrook. He'd lost his coat and his money had gone
with it.
Hugh was not sorry to be in the station lockup. It was a
place to crawl into and pull sleep over his eyes. As the day
passed he felt better, even was able to eat. The sergeant got
his name and address.
'Want me to notify anyone, sonT
'Yeah. My young brother. He's at -' Hugh thought 
confusedly - 'Mt Yatala. How much will the beak hit me for,
you reckonT
The sergeant named a sum, and added, 'That's on top of
costs. And you may have to sport the publican a new mirror.
It couldn't be less than seventy quid, or the option.'
'Hell! My brother could never find that. Unless he can
borrow it. There's a real good boss at Mt Yatala.'
The sergeant agreed to put full details in the telegram, and
send it urgent, collect. Hugh rolled over, groaning at the new
pains that fired up, and tried not to think of Bids.
1
1
0
p
But she was there, vital as sunshine, hardy, unquenchable.
Bids, one moment looking at him limpidly with love, the next
staring at him so strictly, so severely.
'Bids,' he had pleaded, 'Bids! Listen to me.'
'You fooled me, Hugh,' she accused. 'When we danced at
Chanadah, last spring, I asked you if you had a sweetheart
and you said no.'
Hugh admitted it. 'But, Bids love, I can make it all right.
I'll talk to Margaret. She'll break it off.'
'Yes, and when you're tired of me,' she answered, 'you'll
do the same thing.'
How could he explain that she was the core of his heart?
He muttered, 'It's different with you; you're for ever.'
'That girl,' said Bids. 'I saw the engagement snaps, and she
was happy. And her mother said she is fretting herself to
death.'
, The old chook would say that, wouldn't she? Stands to


       reason.'
'I believed her.' She suddenly cried, 'I can't stand 
doublefaced people, Hugh. I can't trust you any more. Oh, you've
got the words, yes, that's the Irish in you I suppose, but I'd
never know when to believe them. You're more like Jer than I
thought.'
Hugh lost his head then. Adrift and confused, he grabbed
at any words or phrases that came his way. They said terrible
things to each other. He jeered at her that he was not the first
man in her life. Bids leapt to her feet, seized the old man's
stick that stood near by and caught him a stinger over the
head.
'You bastard, you low bastard, you know better than that.


       1
And if it was true, what business would it be of yours?'
He seized the stick as it stabbed at his brisket, and
wrenched it from her. He dragged her close.
'Bids, you know I'm mad about you, I. want us to be
married.'
But she would not listen. Crying, struggling, spluttering,
she pushed him from her. He had stung her beyond healing,
he had said fearful things to her.
'Go, go,' she cried. 'I'm not taking a risk on a man who is
two-faced whenever it suits him.'
He went back again the next day and the next but she
would not see him. Steve Tookey met him on the veranda.
'She's made up her mind, Hugh. And she's not one to
change it.'
'And I bet you helped her make it up,' said Hugh bitterly.
'I know you jealous old buggers. It's a crying shame I can't
thump an old man.'
'I can thump a young one,' was all Steve said. 'Better clear
out, son. It's finished.'
Hugh misjudged the father when he believed Steve Tookey
had influenced his daughter's decision. Steve had said,
'You're rattled, girl. Leave it for a month. Hugh will hang
around and wait.'
But Bids, with the hard streak of resolution he had 
unremittingly fostered in her, said, 'No. I can't face instability in
a man's character. I don't know how to handle it.'
Steve pointed out that people misunderstood each other,
judged too harshly. She listened with an unsparing, tearless
face. He wanted to tell her about Rowena's postcard, all
those years ago. Eny should have sought him out, he should
have gone looking for her. Neither did the sensible thing,
even though they had lived for each other. But he could not
say anything about this to his daughter. He could not break
the reserve of years.
He muttered, 'Maybe love isn't as important as you think,
Bids.'
She looked at him as if he were mad.
Her nights were full of questions. 'What have I done?
What do I want?'
On his hard bed in Gaines, Hugh thought the same thing
and moaned aloud.
Mrs Biddle received the telegram for Jer and paid the
collect fee. Doubtfully, she opened it.
She realised that Jer had to hear at once about his brother's
trouble. She had no telephone, so she drove into Juno. There
she found that the boarding house, where she had hoped to
ring Jeremiah, had no telephone either.
'I'm sturnped,' she said. She went outside and sat on the
post-office step and smoked a cigarette. Then she recalled
that Jer was a Catholic. She thought she would ring the


       parish priest at Trafalgar.
Through crackles and a din of thready voices, she got the
message to the priest. Thus by one means or another Jer soon
learnt that his brother was in the lockup and might well end
up in jail.
Jer was at his wits' end. He did not hear a word of
Mrs Kilker's castigation of his making himself a stranger to
them.
'All this time back here in the town and no one knowing
but AM' she scolded. 'You get yourself over here and into
our spare room or I'll never look meself in the face again.'
'How can I get seventy pounds?' he cried, distraught. 'I'll


       1
216
have to let him down. What'd he have to go on a drunken
spree for just now when I haven't got a beanT
He confessed that this was not the first time he had been
called upon to bail Hughie out, or pay his fine. John got the
whole story from him.
, Ah, my dear,' he said privily to his wife, 'is our girl going
to marry a drunk?'
Eny was deeply troubled. She had given her word that no
longer would she oppose her daughter in her love for Hugh
Darcy. But in her heart and head she longed to see the young
people turn their faces away from each other.
Nevertheless she said to Margaret, 'I did what I could for
you when I travelled to Juno, and I'll do what I can again.'
'You don't have to do anything, Ma,' said Margaret. 'I'm
going to Gaines myself.'
Eny argued with her, forbade her, saying she had never
been on a journey in her life. It was up to Jer to go.
Margaret showed a mulish face. 'It's not Jer's business, it's
mine. No matter what has happened, Hugh hasn't broken the
engagement and I haven't either.'
Jer, though anxious for his brother, was profoundly 
relieved. He had no wish to confront Hugh's accusations of
perfidy. He said he thought Margaret would be a comfort to
Hughie, a wonderful comfort.
The parents marvelled at Margaret's resolution. Was this
the girl who had refused food, sat inert for hours, wept like a
cloud for so long? Margaret could not explain that all those
things had happened because that had been her trouble. This
was Hugh's.
'God knows what's the right thing to do,' lamented John.
After Margaret's departure for Gaines he had another slight
i
1
A
heart attack, nothing like the first hammer-blow. Still, pains
sharply twinged chest and arm, a deathly feeling blanched
him with dread. Rowena put him to bed, and sat by him 
holding his hand.
Margaret had listened intently to the account of her
mother's visit to Juno. She had asked only one question:
'What's she like, this BidsT
'Kathleen all over again,' said Eny. 'I had to turn me face
away for the tears when I looked at her.'
The journey for Margaret, shy and nervous as she was, was
an ordeal. All through the racketing, swaying night she
silently recited the Rosary, asking that her resolution be firm,
that she would not say or do any stupid things. It was cold,
coming into autumn; the water in the metal footwarmer had
soon lost its heat. Margaret sat shivering, remembering


       Kathleen who had died when she was young. To Margaret's
backward glance that slender girl was saturated with light,
her glistening hair, the glassy skin. Always she had seemed
poised on tiptoe, as if to take flight. And she had. Perhaps
she had known she was but a guest in the Kilker family. And
Hughie's Bids was like that, like Kathleen.
The train arrived at Gaines in the sleepy morning. In the
waiting room Margaret washed her face and tidied herself.
She thought she looked gaunt and old, not a girl any more
but a woman with many burdens.
The station-master banged on the door. 'Make you a cuppa
tea, missy?,
She was glad to have it, sitting with the ruddy man in the
waiting room. The mill whistle blew.
'You come to visit someoneT he asked.
'Sort of,' said Margaret, not liking to ask him the way to


       1
the police station, but knowing he would watch where she
went.
The police sergeant was watering his garden. Margaret
explained who she was and why she had come.
'I've got money,' she said, 'to pay his fine. You'll have to
tell me what to do, Sergeant.'
'He comes up tomorrow. The beak arrives this afternoon.
You better come into the station and see what your bloke has
got himself into.'
With a stupefied expression, Margaret read the charge
sheet. The sergeant thought with pity: 'Poor girl, silly as a tin
of fish where that young scamp's concerned.'
'Did he do all thatT she asked. 'He must have been 
dreadfully upset. They won't send him to prison, will theyT
'Not if he can pay the fine.'
'Can I see him now?'
Hugh looked up as the sergeant unlocked the door of his
small open-barred cell. When he saw Margaret he felt like
banging his head against the wall.
'What are you doing hereT he shouted. 'Where's that
bloody JerT
'That's no way to talk to a young lady come all the way
from Trafalgar,' remonstrated the sergeant. 'You can sit on
the other bunk, miss. Call if you need me.'
He locked them in.
Margaret looked at Hughie, face swollen, his clothes in
dirty disarray, his lip split, and began to laugh. She had no
idea why she did. For the moment she lost her nervous 
distress. She sat down almost gaily.
'Aren't you the dog's breakfast?' she said.
Hughie again asked angrily where Jer was, and she replied,
218
'He's back in Trafalgar, with my people. He's not too well.
And anyway, this is my business.'
If Hugh had been free he would have walked away. But all
he could do was to crouch on his bunk and look at her
dumbly. He saw she was thinner, the sweet pink that had
always pleased him had gone from her face. He could not tell
whether she was vengeful, hostile or what. She seemed her
usual self.
'You brought any cash?'
'Yes, I brought all our wedding money.'
'Gawd!' Hughie buried his head in his hands. But there
was no shelter there.
'I suppose your mother told you everything? Funny, I
thought it was Jer who spilt the beans.'
'Well, in a kind of way it was. I suppose he meant well,'
she said. She added: 'What happened after that? Have you
seen Miss Tookey since Ma spoke to her?'
As she spoke that name she observed the change in


       Hughie's face - rage, loss, a deprivation that cut her to the
heart. But she went on steadily: 'I have the right to know,
Hugh.'
He told her, turning his head away, mumbling.
'That's it, all of it.' He burst out: 'What have you come
here for? To give me the ring back, tear strips off me, tell me
what a no-hoper I am, ehT
He took refuge in aggressiveness, glaring at her, slamming
his fist against the wall.
'I just want to know what you'll do after. You know, after
you get out of here.'
'I don't know.'
She was silent. He rushed back and forth in his mind,
219


       unable to think. He asked her to go away, he was seedy and
half-poisoned still, he had a headful of wool.
'But I'm glad you came,' he mumbled. 'Thanks. You're a
trump.'
Trump, thought Margaret desolately, walking up and
down the grubby room in the hotel to which the sergeant had
sent her. He still loves that Bids. But he might come back to
Trafalgar just the same. He's that upset he needs someone,
even me or Jer. It's up to me, I suppose, to take second best
or nothing.
She had her pride, yes. Now that she looked at it, damaged
and bleeding, she saw what a complex thing it was. Hughie
had wounded it almost mortally, and yet she needed it to save
him from a wasted life.
'Why do I think I can save him?' she wondered. 'I'm just
ordinary, not clever at all. But I love him. I don't know why I
love him, but love is there and always will be.'
She was apprehensive of the court case, the magistrate, the
witnesses. She might herself be called as a character 
witness, the sergeant told her. When she reached the police
station the next morning she shook like a leaf; she had to go
to the lavatory every five minutes. She rushed into the
Women's, clean but suffocating with the smell of that 
disinfectant people used to commit suicide. She could not
remember the brand name and it worried her.
The courthouse was no more than a formally arranged
room under the same roof as the police station. Dismayed,
Margaret stole glances at the bald man peering like a
cormorant over the high desk, the portraits of King George
and Queen Mary, the subdued demeanour of witnesses and
220
1
plaintiff. Three of the witnesses were in as much bodily
disarray as Hughie. One, his eyes lost in green and yellow
puffs, his nose taking a south-west direction, said cheerily the
whole thing had been fair and square, a first-rate stoush
enjoyed by all. In truth, no one seemed to have any grievance
against Hugh except the publican.
Margaret was called. Her composure had deserted her.
Trembling, she held to the rail before her. She was croaked at
to speak up, speak up, speak up, madam. Asked about
Hugh's general reputation as she knew it, she said he was a
decent boy, much liked in his own town, Trafalgar. She had
been engaged to him for nearly four years and would marry
him soon.
'What made your fianc~ go berserk?' she was asked.
'I was not there, sir,' she replied.
'Well, there goes all our dough,' said Hugh glumly after he
was freed. 'The fine, and that bloody mirror in the pub 
it couldn't have cost all that. Bastard's having a piece of me.'
'Of us,' said Margaret tartly. She was extremely fatigued.


       She had not eaten properly for days or even weeks.
Hugh took her into the town's one tearoom.
'You'll have to pay,' he said. Margaret counted what
money she had.
'If you're coming back to Trafalgar with me, I've only
enough for your ticket. I've got my return.'
'Oh, great,' said Hugh. 'We can't even afford a cup of
tea.'
He was so humiliated, enraged with himself, bitter towards
her, he longed to tell her to stick the flaming ticket up her
jumper.
221


       'Might as well wait at the station then,' he said grumpily.
'Suit yourself,' said Margaret. 'I'm going to sit in that little
park and look at the flowers. Here, take this and buy your
ticket.'
She walked away. Hughie was open mouthed. Never 
before had Margaret stated her own preference. He had
taken it for granted that she was all too happy to do
whatever he wished. He entered the station. He still felt
unwell, stiff and sore. What could he do without a penny in
his pocket? What did Margaret intend he should do? He
could not think straight. Best go to Trafalgar, hole up a bit
and puzzle it all out. He bought the ticket and idled over to
Margaret.
'Bit windy on the platform.'
They circled conversationally around the blue and yellow
flowers, when Jer had left Mt Yatala, the twang and screech
of the saws. Margaret seemed withdrawn, almost enigmatic,
to Hugh; she was so unlike herself, no tears, no stumbled
reproaches, no real interest, it seemed.
'You make it damned hard for a man,' he said at last.
'To do whaff she asked, looking directly at him. He was
struck by the gentle blue of her eyes, after the dark candour
of Bids's. He shrugged: 'Well, if you're going to take that
attitude.'
'Don't try that on me, Hugh,' she said without rancour.
'You face up to things. You treated me rottenly, and that
other girl rottenly, too. You got no call and no right to get up
on your hind legs.'
, Why did you come here then?' he asked in a fury.
'Because I love you, of course,' she said, reasonably, as if
she had to set him straight.
j
Hugh saw at once that she had put herself into his hands. It
was the thing he dreaded most, a responsibility he was
powerless to reject.
'I'm grateful, Margaret, for everything,, he said.
She did not acknowledge this. He had the impression she
would have done the same thing for a dog.
Irritably he burst out: 'Well, don't sit there like a mummy.
We got to talk some time.' When she remained silent he said
loudly, 'We got to talk.'
'I can't, Hughie,' she said. 'I'm tired. I'm tired of
worrying and wondering where I stand.'
But in the train he put his arm around her and she did not
draw away. She slept against his shoulder. Hughie looked at
the lakes sliding past, the trees black brooms against the light
sky, and wondered what it was all about. He did not want to
think about anything.
Back in Trafalgar Hughie dumped his swag on the Kilkers
veranda, where Jer sat cutting up onions and cauliflower for
winter pickles. Jer looked at him beseechingly.


       'It's all right,' said his brother, aiming a cuff at him.
'You're not wiped.'
Jer stuttered out explanations. Hughie cut him short.
'That's it. Forget it, eh?'
Jer appeared shockingly delicate. The bones of his face
seemed about to jump through the skin.
Hugh said, 'I'm real sorry about the operation being a
flop. Maybe some other time, another doctor. When I get
some money together again.'
'Yeah, sure,' said Jer. Hugh saw his brother did not believe
him. No one seemed to have faith in his word any more.
'I got to get a job,' he said.


       i
224
'They're scarce,' said Jer. 'Everyone says there's a real
daddy of a slump coming.' He heaved himself up and took
the basin of vegetables into the kitchen.
Hugh faced up to John Kilker, sitting like an old grandpa
in a chair before the fire.
'I'm real sorry it happened,' said Hugh. 'It was just one of
them things that hit a man.'
John had been prepared to give the young fellow a good
talking-to, but he did not feel like it. He was struck by
Hughie's dejection and-said kindly, 'You were caught 
between a rock and a hard place, lad. But what man isn't,
some time in his life? There was a little girl I was spoony
about before I met Rowena. She died of the typhoid fever. I
was all broken up and hanging down for the best part of a
year. But I got over it. The thing is, are you still fond of
Margaret?'
'I am,' admitted Hughie.
'And what does she think about it?'
'I don't know,' Hughie had to confess.
John looked clever. 'Ah, she wants to be courted all over
again. That's the way of them, you know.'
With John's help, Hughie got a job in the iceworks. He
lived elsewhere in the town. He wrote to Bids a dozen times,
pouring out his despondency, huge incoherent letters full of
excuses and justification. But he had no answer. He told 
himself she was unforgiving, hard as nails, he was well shot of
her. He was like one bereaved, living in a matter-of-fact way
for much of the time, at other times suffering such anguish,
such a tumult of emotions, he thought he must die to find
peace.
During this time, ironically, his only source of comfort was
the Kilker household. He sat by the fire with John, like an 01
man himself, listening to Jer and Mr Kilker swapping yarns
Jer singing bits of songs. Sometimes Margaret came to si
never speaking o
there as well. She was a peaceful presence,
Juno or Bids. Whatever clamour there was in her heart, nc
one ever heard about it. Eny was driven mad by curiosity and
impatience. She was all for Margaret's having a grand 
conflagration with Hughie and etti h
chest.
'You let us alone, Ma. He's getting over it. Let him do it at
his own rate.'
But Rowena could not see that Hugh was getting over it. She
was nettled that her daughter so disregarded her sage advice.
'She's praying for you,' she said vengefully to the young
nian. 'We're all praying for you.'
'A man hasn't a chance in this place,' thought Hughie
ruefully.


       He asked Margaret to come to the pictures: Greta Garbo,
whom she loved. In the darkness he squeezed her hand and
whispered, 'You're damned good, Margaret. I'm glad you're
around.'
It was a contrary thing that in this time of his dejection
Margaret should be a comfort. He did not wonder what was
going on in her head.
Margaret had made the great offering. She had placed her
future life in God's hands. Not my will but Thine be done,
she had said, and frequently experienced a terrible panic in
case this should be so. All kind of things seemed to her to be
bad omens. There was a story Jer told her father that put her
spirits under a cloud for days; it seemed mysteriously directed
at her, though not by Jer.
E5 -s L. e whole thing ott ner
225


       A twice great-grandfather of the Darcys it was who, 
wandering along the Galway strand, found a rich coffin. Lying
within was a beautiful young girl, alive but speechless. The
only jewellery she wore was a silver ear stud. The twice 
greatgrandfather, his heart overborne by this strange waif, deeply
desired that she should speak, so that she could make the
marriage vows. He went for advice to a saintly hermit and was
told the girl had been stolen by the sea people long before.
She could nor speak until the silver ear stud was removed.
Gladly the great-great-grand father did this. But alas, what
the lost girl said was that she belonged to someone else; and
so the rescuer was left to marry someone else and to fret his
life away.
'For the love of God, child,' exploded Eny when Margaret
confided the uncanny feeling she had. 'There's not a shadow
of likeness.'
'But I did rescue him,' said Margaret.
From afar Josie Capper watched the gradual 
rapprochement of her sister and Hughie. Josie had time on her hands;
she had been forced to close her office for lack of work.
Continued adversity had disheartened her. She was grieved,
shaken. Somehow she could not come to terms with the
disappointment.
Aunt Alf, who within a few months had grown frail and
shaky, tried to console her.
'It's just that people don't consider young ladies can do
that kind of work.'
'Why?' cried Josie. 'What has being a girl to do with 
anything if a person is properly qualified?'
'People are like that,' said Aunt Alf helplessly. 'They get
ideas.'
226
1
She thought of mentioning to her niece how she, a new
immigrant, had been turned down for many situations in 
decent households because she was Irish and a Catholic. 'But
I'm a good cook,' she had protested. 'I work like a Trojan.
I've a good character from the Emigration Office.' No use.
No use at all.
'It's what you call prejudice,' she said.
Josie's struggles with the mindless injustice of her world
were beginning to show on her face. Only halfway through
her twenties, and already there was a cynical droop to her
mouth. Aunt Alf's heart was sore for her.
'Perhaps you could make up with your husband,' she
suggested timidly.
'I'd sooner go and ask that swine Hatch for a job,' said
Josie. Her face softened. 'Ah, dear Auntie Alf, I'll never
forgive myself for losing your money. I tried hard not to, I
really did.'
'What's money, my treasure?' said Aunt Alf, kissing her.


       'Di ur La y worry a out moneyT
All very well, thought the girl, but Our Lady had a good
husband. If she hadn't, I don't think she would have made it,
and everything in our world would have been different.
Josie applied for positions wherever they offered, but
without success. Those with responsibility and opportunity
for promotion were given to male applicants; the lesser jobs
went to young girls who could be paid the minimum wage and
dismissed when they turned eighteen. There seemed no place
for a woman of Josie's age.
Josie caught a bad cold in the winter wind. It settled on her
chest and she went to bed. The doctor suspected pleurisy, but
in reality she had some kind of breakdown. The world
227


       pressed in on her. On every side it attacked her with its
traditions, its false concepts and self- righteousness. At night
she wept inconsolably, knowing that some part of her must
be defeated. She could not think what else she might do. The
bright flame of independence seemed to have no heat in it
now. Again and again she went over the errors of her life.
The common lot of womankind had been there in front of
her nose but for some reason, bumptiousness, innocence, 
romanticism, she had not believed it. Why had she thought that
life was fair? Had her mother, long ago, been like her, a wild
foal, kicking up her heels at the deliciousness of being alive?
Was disillusionment the secret of Delia's disregard for all
others?
There was her sister Margaret, who would never learn, no
matter how many foul blows fate dealt her. Margaret thought
that because she loved the world, the world loved her. She
had faith in the goodness of God.
Here she was, blushes coming and going, telling her sister
that she and Hugh Darcy had made up. In two months they
would marry.
'Aren't you scared Bids Tookey will come back into his
lifeT Josie, though so unhappy herself, could not resist
trying to prick her sister's bubble.
'She's been,' answered Margaret, 'and she's gone.'
Steve Tookey had scolded his daughter when he saw her
putting Hugh's letters in the stove.
'Fair go, girl.' He knew she was eating her heart out.
'No,' she said, her lips a firm line. 'It's finished. He's not
going to get around me twice.'
Steve said, 'You're feeding your anger, Bids.'
228
'Maybe I am,' she flashed back. 'Just like you fed your
anger all these years against my mother.'
It was the first time she had ever deliberately wounded him.
In his pain he turned away.
, That's true, girl. And that's how I know anger is sour
pickings.'
In vain she wept her contrition, hugged his spare body to
her breast. A little uneasiness grew between them, not 
coolness, not embarrassment, but rather a shared knowledge of
guilty pride.
One evening Bids said to her father, 'I've applied for a
transfer, Daddy. Sydney.'
Steve heard the sound of farewell, and nodded.
'It's come through.'
'You'll see your mother. Living with her maybe.'
'No, I thought I'd get a flat. Whatever I can afford.
Because I want you to come too, Dad.'
'Leave JunoT
He was amazed. He, who had been born with such itchy
toes, had not thought of leaving Juno since he returned from


       South Africa. Bids, kneeling beside him, her arms about his
bent back, pleaded ardently. She was eloquent about the
pleasures of the city, the easier climate, the comfort they
would have.
But Steve did not hear that beloved voice. He saw himself
as a young man, a real cock o' the walk, labouring in the
smithy. Crowds of Steve Tookeys, dissolving, appearing in a
magical progression, middle-aged, getting lamed by that
drunk, married, Evie, Bids's coming. The town did the same
thing, houses flowing up the hills, the dark fur of the long
gentle slopes shrinking, vanishing. He was alarmed. If he left


       Juno he would not have anything. All that he was and had
been was here.
'Ah, no, Bids, I couldn't do that. I'm too old.'
His face was like reddened wood. There was the unresilient
took of wood about it, as though he had grown into a tree, a
tree with roots in Juno.
'Then I won't go. I won't leave you here alone.'
They argued back and forth for a week.
'You fetch old Jim Oyster for me. I feel like a yarn and a
beer,' said Steve.
Jim Oyster had been retired for three years. He lived with
his daughter, and the noise of the kids drove him dotty. Steve
put it to him to come and share the cottage after Bids's
departure. Jim gladly accepted.
'The daughter will help out with cooking, and keeping the
draughts out of our socks and things like that. She'll be real
glad to have the extra room now the boys are growing.'
Steve called Bids and gave her the news.
'Us old pots'll look after each other. Yes, I want you to go,
girl. It's right for young ones.'
He promised Bids he'd come for a long holiday after she
was settled, but they both knew he would not.
Bids felt it was the end of the world. But she was driven
forth by something inexorable, a passionate instinct.
She suffered more than she believed possible. Losing her
mother had been a fearful amputation; for six months she
had wandered in a half-world, no anchor, no holdfast except
her resolute will. Losing Hugh was another blow, one with
which she could not come to terms. And now she was leaving
this old man, the centre of her life.
On an impulse she sent a letter to Hugh Darcy.
230
'I'm going to work in Sydney. The express stops for a few
minutes at Trafalgar. I'd like to say goodbye and good luck.'
She gave the date and the time of the train. Bids told her
father what she had done. She expected him to be 
disconcerted, but a grin slowly spread over his features.
'You're trying yourself out, Bridget.'
'That's right. I want to finish clean.'
Hugh received her letter. His longing to see her again was
so intense he had to plead sick and take a day away from
~& ork. All day he wandered the hills. That evening he called to
see Jer. His brother squatted in a chair, rubbing his ankles.
He listened querulously to what Hugh had to say, then with
terror. Hugh was going to make up to Bids Tookey again,
and he, Jer, would never have a home with his brother. But
Hugh continued: 'I want you to meet that train, Jer. I got no
one else to ask. I want you to say good wishes from me and I
hope she'll always be happy.'
'I will, I will,' gabbled Jer, almost in tears.
'You won't say anything else, JerT entreated Hugh. 'You


       won't make up any big stories, or tell lies about what I did or
said? You promise just to say what I told you?'
'May I hope to die if I don't keep that promise,' said Jer.
Hugh went away without seeing any other member of the
household, and Jer rolled around in his chair with relief and
ecstasy. That would be the end of the bitch. Margaret had
won out and so had he.
He did as Hughie had asked. Hughie did not question him
about that fleeting encounter, but Jer knew he was awaiting a
message.
'She said good luck and she'll never forget you.'
'Right. Thanks.'


       Hughie took Margaret to the pictures. Coming home
across the suspension bridge, they stopped to peer into the
dark water, alive with wagging, jostling star reflections.
'This old bridge is going to fall to pieces one of these days.'
'It's stood up to just so many floods,' said Margaret. 'It'll
be here when we got grey hair.'
'I want to tell you something,' said Hugh. He told her
about Bids Tookey passing through on her way to Sydney,
and Jer carrying his farewell. Margaret was silent for a while.
'Did you feel bad?'
'Yes. But I'll get over it.'
Pain seized him suddenly, in the way it had. Silently he
shouted: 'I won't, I won't. Never.'
'I suppose I will, too,' said Margaret. They walked across
the Domain to her home.
They sat for a while on the veranda, arms around each
other.
'What do you reckon it is about us?'
'I don't know. I suppose it was meant somehow.'
Jer, spying through the crack in the curtains, went back to
bed. Deep religious feeling flooded him. He was sorry he had
thrown Bids Tookey's holy picture away. God had been
watching out for him all along, just like that guardian angel.
He was safe at last.
5
0
-nine
Hugh and Margaret rented a small weatherboard cottage
,for seven shillings and sixpence a week. Empty houses showed
heir bereft faces all over Trafalgar. People overshadowed
by the coming Depression were scuttling together, sharing
roofs and household expenses.
'It's nothing to write home about,' grumbled Hugh,
kicking the wall and watching fine borer dust trickle out of a
rash of holes.
'It's ours, though,' murmured Margaret. She had become
gentle-voiced and slow-moving these last weeks. She lived as
if absorbed in a dream. Hughie found this languor strangely
erotic. It seemed he had at last overcome in the girl some
resistance he had scarcely known existed. She was powerless
before his desire; everything wavered, upbringing, 
conscience, Church. The defeat of the Church brought him a
mean, small triumph. He had swept away that powerful and
ambiguous presence in Margaret's heart. He was therefore
more of a king with this girl than he had been with Bids
Tookey, who recognised the final jurisdiction of none of
those things. He seized Margaret roughly.
23


       'Bloody emperor, aren't IV He preened himself. For a
moment something lenient and sage looked out of her eyes.
So you think I'm just for ransacking, it conveyed. You'll
learn. Still, there was a strong feeling for life in Margaret. She
sensed sweetness and drama in the empty house, the slant of
sunlight in which they lay, the smell of must and dead ashes
overlaid by that of sappy grass. She did not answer and he
forgot the question.
In the unkempt garden bloomed freesias and grape 
hyacinths. The eucalypt twigs flushed red, the four creeks
overflowed, lambs appeared on the hills, white as mushrooms
and as sudden.
'Them two had better wed quick,' said Eny ominously, 'or
I won't answer for Margaret.'
'Ah, my dear,' thought her husband, 'if we could have our
time over again!'
John sold the old cow paddock next his house, and gave
the money to the young people as a wedding present. Hugh
was both pleased and obscurely angry.
'It ought to be my Dad giving us that, not yours,' he said to
Margaret. But the gift removed a weight from his shoulders,
for he was aware that his iceworks job was insecure. The firm
was not taking on any young fellows; older men were pressed
to retire early.
'I break into a cold sweat to think of being out of work,' he
admitted. Margaret was optimistic.
'If things get too bad we'll go to Sydney,' she said. 'There's
always work in a big city; everyone says so. Isn't that right,
Jer?'
She saw the city swim like a mirage out of the sweltering
smoke of industry. Always hungry for workers, cities were,
otherwise how did the wheels keep turning?
'God's good. You just have to trust Him,' she told Hughie.
Half of the young man's brain marvelled at confidence that
was both artless and relentless. The other half drew support
and comfort from this very thing. Perhaps she was right. She
had got what she wanted, hadn't she, and who was to say
God had not given it to her?
With a satirical eye, Jer watched the expressions chasing
each other over his brother's face. He knew Hughie's present
mood of resolution. He had put Bids Tookey and what he felt
for her into some closed place, and he thought she would stay
there. There was no guarantee that his resolution would last.
Well, what does? thought Jer without rancour. All things in
life, or so he had found, were transient. He began once more
to write to Mrs Biddle. If things went wrong between him and
the lovebirds, he required a bolthole to slip into without delay
or fuss.
The thought of a marriage in the family gave John renewed
vitality. He knew he was not the man he had been. A shelly
rim showed around the iris of his eye and every time he


       washed his face he felt the skull pushing against his fingers.
Be damned to that,' said John to himself. 'I'll see my
treasure married and I might last long enough to see young
Josephine settled as well.'
The night before the wedding the house was thronged as six
in a bed, Dan, the eldest, having brought his seven children,
great cackling louts all under eighteen years old. Eleven
o'clock in the evening it was, and they were still talking at the
tops of their voices, the jabber interspersed with squabbles
and sudden blasts of temper.
Eny and John lay like nested boomerangs, her back cosily
fitted against his stomach, her head under his chin. It had
been their favourite sleeping position for forty or more years.


       'I can't warm to them children and that's a fact,' confided
Eny. 'They must take after Myra.'
Silently they meditated on the lucky accident of Myra's
having put her back out. They had met Dan's wife only three
times and liked her on none of them. She was a plaintive
woman with an eccentric stomach.
'The age of that Dan!' continued Eny with wonderment.
She failed to identify the burly, lavender-chinned farmer with
the rose-petal infant she had loved with such passion.
'It's the wonder of the world how they grow away from
you,' agreed John. 'It's a shame Emmet couldn't make it
after ten years. Likely we wouldn't even know him except for
the freckles.'
They said their prayers together, John giving out and Eny
answering.
'Who did you offer for?' whispered Eny when the last
amen was said.
'The other one, our Delia, that she's happy wherever she
is,' said John. 'She had hair that nice, like a little duck.'
'God bless you, my darling,' thought Eny of John. 'God
reward you for what you've been to me and the children.' But
all she said was, 'Them rowdies of Dan's are all roosting, be
the sound of them, so let's go to sleep.'
Hugh and Margaret stood up together in the crowded
church and were married. Hughie had been away from his 
religion so long that the ceremony tricked him altogether, the
standings up and sittings down, the priest turning his back or
his front at unpredictable intervals. The altar was 
ornamented with white flowers, there was a snuffy odour of
candles. The morning light through the coloured windows
had the bloom of fruit.
236
Hugh recalled that his father, when he first came to the
town, had helped build this church. Every plank was pitsawn
by Irish immigrants, every shingle hand-chopped from silky
oak. The poor devil Martin had been only a year or two older
than he, Hughie, black stiff hair, eyes blue as glass marbles.
And then, ten years later, he and his bride had stood here
in this very place, hoping for and expecting happiness.
'Hughie!' Margaret jogged his arm.
'I do,' he said, hurriedly.
It seemed to Margaret that all roads had led to this place,
this moment, since she fell off the merry-go-round on the
King's Birthday. But it wasn't her planning any more than it
was his. It was just the way life turned out.
Jer began to sing 'Oh, Promise Me!' and one of the female
guests uttered a neigh. She was not the only one. Halfway
through the ceremony Rowena began to cry. This was 
because of a number of things: the arduous preparations for the
wedding breakfast; the desperate night she'd spent because of
Dan's bog-trotters; John's going away from her. Yes, she felt


       that any year now the great blow would come, she would be
left alone.
Josie sat beside her mother. Margaret had wanted Josie to
be her attendant, but the priest had raised Cain. In the
Church's eyes Josie had an anomalous position. What could
I
she be, bridesmaid or matron of honour? He felt the question
should be submitted to the Bishop. Josie stepped down from
the honour, and Margaret had for bridesmaid Dan's Mary,
fourteen years old and crimson with fright.
Josie now put her arm around her mother, expecting it to
be shrugged away. But it was not.
'Aren't you all I have now, Josie?' choked Eny. Josie left


       her arm where it was. She thought the remark arose from her
mother's sense of the dramatic occasion, but received it
tolerantly. Her mother was now over sixty, she had white hair
with sulphur streaks; lately her fine straight back tended to
bend at the shoulders. Josie felt pity for this woman who had
impaired her sense of worth, left despoiled her childish pride
of self, but had no comprehension of the damage she had
done. It occurred then to Josie that she had always expected
her mother to be more than human. She had confounded the
woman with her motherly function. She had given no scope
to the wrongheaded, wilful spirit that inhabited this familiar
body.
'Will you come back home to liveT whispered Eny.
'There's Aunt Alf,' pointed out Josie. 'She needs me
more.'
'Much you know,' said Eny, sorrowfully.
When Josie had told Margaret of Bids Tookey, and seen
the almost fatal wound she had given her sister, she became
aware of a shift in her concept of life. It was as if some power
had decided she was getting nowhere the way she was. In the
moment of forgiveness for her mother, there was a second
veering onto a new road.
'I know you're thinking of Pa,' she said. 'But I'm sure he'll
be with us many years yet.'
At the house, she sat quietly at the table amidst the jolly
uproar. She realised clearly that she no longer possessed the
combative spirit of her youth. Perhaps malice had been the
sparkling stream that energised her. She had put her heart
into becoming someone freer, more independent than her
mother or Margaret; she had done everything possible 
towards that end and she had failed.
238
'If you're a woman,' she thought, 'in the end someone
always arranges your life for you.'
She wondered what the end would be for her.
Her eldest brother Dan had an eye on her. Stunned to hear
of her calamitous marriage, he had been outraged when his
Pa told him that Josie planned to divorce the scoundrel. Dan
let his father know what he felt, what Myra would feel, about
this disgrace to the family.
'Ah,' said John charitably, 'can you blame the young ones,
wars and depressions and picture shows and all? But she's a
good girl for all that.'
Dan gazed at Josie, surreptitiously looking for signs of sin.
He thought she looked moody, far from well, thin as a 
fishbone picked by a gull. Well, she'd made her bed and she
knew what to expect, a life spent hanging around with the old
people, neither married nor unmarried, one of those 
disconsolate leftover women.
'Ah, but God's good,' thought Dan, cheering up. 'She'll
always be on hand to take care of Aunt Alf and Ma and Pa.


       The way things are, she'll be in no position to say no.'
In fact, Josie's future life was remarkably different.
Shortly after her divorce a gusty wind struck her, bowling her
head over heels. This vital, self-engrossed man, hair in a
bush, a boot-shaped nose, forty-five if he was a day, was
nothing more than a house painter but could, if he chose,
have been a rich or powerful man. Nature had endowed him
with that mysterious voluptuousness which irresistibly calls
forth the folly of women. He was affable to the creatures,
leaving them melting with nostalgia, their hatboxes and other
hidey-holes rich with mementoes, dried flowers, chocolate
wrappers, tram tickets. Not being wealthy, he could give


       7,10
them no more, though he would have if circumstances had
allowed. He was a generous man. Now that he was 
middleaged, and by nature indolent, he looked about for a wife.
Josie realised she had never known what love was. 
Vehemently she wrote to her married sister Margaret in Sydney.
Every time she set eyes on Harnett Gore she could faint. She
could not sleep, she would rather starve by his side than live
in luxury without him. For the first time, she confessed, she
understood how Margaret had felt about Hugh Darcy.
With the clarity of experience Margaret realised that Josie
was sunk. Josie married Harney and in no time at all had four
children, cystitis, and never a spare moment to brood on her
past ambitions for success and a tidy life. Had she really
become a qualified accountant, had she tried with anguish to
establish a business of her own? The whole thing was a
dream, something she had read in a women's magazine.
Josie subsided beneath the flood. It was warm and safe
down there; she loved her children ardently; everyone said
Harney was a lucky man, she was a wife in a thousand. It was
hard to go against the approbation of everyone she knew.
Josie realised this was called settling down. She no longer had
the time to think about it, or try to work it out, but it was, she
supposed, Life.
As with Josie's unpredictable future, so with Auntie Alf's.
At the wedding breakfast guests looked sidelong at the dry
wisp of a woman, and if they had any saucy jokes up their
sleeves they kept them there. They thought she looked like a
nun out of place.
As the beer circulated and noise began to lift the roof,
Auntie Alf felt in her head the frightening dislocation that
preceded one of her nervous attacks. Eny had put away stout
at a great rate. She and Jer were well away on the forty-three
verses of her favourite song:
Brian OLynn was a gentleman born
His hair it was long and his whiskers unshorn,
His teeth were far out and his eyes were far in,
'I'm a wonder for beauty,' says Brian OLynn.
Sweat broke out on Alf's parchment brow; she staggered to
her feet. Immediately the teapot tipped over and flooded the
Father. The crimson bridesmaid got a pig's toe caught in her
throat. Josie flew around the table and half carried the old
woman to the kitchen.
Brian OLynn was in want of a brooch
He took a brass pin and a fine cockeroach ...
'Ma!' said Josie sharply' 'You're needed in the kitchen!'
The sight of Alf lolling in a chair, her eyes adrift, her chin
fallen, drove the fumes from Rowena's brain.
'God in heaven, has she been called home on us?' she
cried.
The breast of his shirt he fixed it straight in,


       'They'll think it a diamond,'says Brian OLynn.
bMargaret rustled in, a big doll in her white tulle and orange
lo
ssom, to find her mother beside the chair, holding Auntie
Alf's head to her breast in the tenderest manner, and firing


       242
off a command to Josie to haul in the doctor. But the doctor
was astride Dan's daughter, trying to hook out the pig's toe.
'Wasn't she enjoying the trotter, poor Mary; she was
always a terror for a pigsfoot.'
'Hail, Queen of Heaven, the ocean star, guide of us 
wanderers here below.'
'Can you get a purchase on it, doctorT
'Fetch the holy water, one of yous, and be quick about it.'
'Serve her right, tearing into that pigsfoot like a starving
sheepdog.'
'Will you stand back!' roared the doctor. 'Throw that holy
water on me once more and I'll job you. Someone get a holt
on her teeth - she's like a shark. Ah, got it!'
Mary, weeping and retching, was led into the air. They
could hear her ow-owing all the way across the lawn. Jer took
up his guitar.
Faith of our fathers, living still
in spite of dungeon, fire and sword..
Auntie Alf opened her eyes.
'Them words,' marvelled Eny, 'they've the power of
magic.'
But Alf had been coming round at her own speed the past
five minutes. Very comfortable she was against Eny's breast,
though the smell of stout was fierce. Eny looked down at her
anxiously. 'Ah,' she thought, 'the old thing is the weight of a
feather. And pale! You could drop snow on her face and you
wouldn't see it.'
Eny had never missed her mother, or could not recall doing
V**~
so, but now she did. Give or take a few years, Alf Kilker
could be her mother, needing loving care in the extremity of
her life, a religious hand to close her eyes at the last.
'Alf,' she said, choking with impetuous tears, 'you're
coming to live with me and John, I'll not hear a word against
it. Long ago I promised to look after you in your frailty, and
here I stand fast to keep that vow!'
That was how it happened, and a great comfort Alf was to
Rowena for several years after John went to his eternal rest.
The pair of them would sit on opposite sides of the fire,
knitting socks for the grandchildren, talking about old times,
Eny sometimes taking a blast of the little clay pipe she
had become attached to after John's departure, Alf often
knocking off the chat to say a silent aspiration or turn her
thoughts to God in sweet gratitude. For she was not far from
being a saint off the wall, as Rowena believed.
But now it was time for the bride and groom to leave.
Margaret kissed her aunt and her mother, and went to her old
bedroom to change her clothes. The married pair were not
going away.
'I'd rather spend my honeymoon in our own little house,'


       said Margaret.
She and Hugh said their goodbyes. The company wanted
to escort the bridal couple, banging tin cans and roaring all
the way, but John forbade them.
'It's a moonlight night,' he said. 'They'll never forget it.'
Such was his majesty, the respect in which all held him,
that no one followed Hugh and Margaret. John sat down and
took off his shoes.
'Well, my dears,' he said, stretching out his clenched toes,
243


       'if ever I wear them grand boots again it'll be to my wake,
and that's a promise. And now if young Jer will strike up
we'll have a sing-song to round off the evening.'
Hugh and Margaret heard the yips ahd hooches nearly all
the way to their home.
'They might as well have come with us, the row they're
making,' said Hugh.
His wife was both shy and excited. She longed to have a
good cry, or a talk with Josie.
'I'll make a cup of tea,' she said.
'It won't be too bad,' thought Hugh, surveying the double
bed with the marcella counterpane patterned with ribbons
and bouquets. 'The Kilkers are real good people, respected.
They'd stand by us if things get tough. But I'm not having
that old faggot of a Ma sticking her nose in our affairs.'
'Maybe we will go to Sydney,' he said when Margaret came
into the room. She was wearing a long nightdress.
'Not yet, though,' she answered, banking the fire in the
small curved bedroom grate. 'I wouldn't like to leave my
people yet.'
'Take that bloody shroud off!' he commanded. She did
not like to. He repeated his order, threatening to chase her
out on the lawn and rip it off there. At last he had the
nightdress on the floor and Margaret in bed.
'God, you're an armful and a half!' he said.
Before midnight, though lulled by warmth and delicious
ease, Hugh was still wakeful. He had rarely spent an entire
night with a girl. It occurred to him now that this was one of
life's near perfect experiences, a drowsy, relaxed involvement
with a sleeping girl's body. He bit her shoulder gently, tickled
her breast, but she did not wake. He ran an exploratory hand
244
over her. How delectable all those plains and hills! She was a
landscape all on her own. He ran the sole of his foot up and
down her calf. It was slick as glass, with a defenceless feel to
it. He tried his own calf. Quite different, hairy as an old sock
and hard as a brick.
Well, she wasn't such a bad buy. He hugged her more
closely, remembering Mrs Kilker's pointing out a rosebush
beside her kitchen door. The more blooms you picked, she
had said, the more the bush produced. It was a good giver.
That was Margaret, a good giver.
How had that fightable old girl produced a gentle soul like
Margaret? He had a sudden desire to protect his wife from
her mother's nipping and niggling, to show the old woman
she was wrong in her estimation of him as a husband.
Bids now. He would have tried, have broken his neck in the
effort to be a hero of a husband to her! But it wasn't to be.
She'd find someone better, someone more her own kind. He
caught his breath, his eyes filled with tears. Something inside
him that had strained, panted, struggled to open its wings,


       folded those wings and seemed to sleep.
He turned his thoughts away from Bids. But still sleep did
not come.
Drowsing, he lay and watched the fire, a red wink, a crack
of sparks. Well, he mused, he had Margaret for better or
worse, and she had him. I won't get on the grog again, he
thought. A few beers with the boys. But not on the grog.
The curtain wafted gently from the window, and the full
blaze of moonlight filled the room, not white, not blue,
unearthly. A dark knob, roundish in shape, seemed to sit on
the window sill. Hugh looked at it indifferently for a while,
then realised with a start that it was a human head.
245


       i
'Oh, boy" he thought. 'That little tick!'
He coughed, and the head sank out of sight. Hugh slipped
from bed, dragged on his trousers and boots, and raced
outside. Jer was crouched in the deep shadow of the chimney;
the moonlight glinted on the metal tip of a crutch.
'Come on out, Jer. I can see your crutch, Jer,' he said
gently.
Jer came out, beaming, full of explanations. He had just
been passing. The party was still going on at Kilker's, so he'd
gone out for fresh air. Hughie swooped on him, seized him by
the scruff, and dragged him down the yard.
'I'll go home, Hughie, I will, I swear,' babbled Jer.
'You peeping Tom, I couldn't trust you. I'm going to lock
you in the dub until morning.'
Now Jer let out a strangled shriek. 'It's cold. I'll die of
cold. You know I'm delicate. I'll go home, honest I will.'
No use. Hughie hurled his brother into the dark depths of
the outside lavatory and shut the door. There was a bar to
keep chickens and other creatures from sheltering in there,
and Hugh slammed it home. He stood there grinning. It was
freezing. Winter still hung around, thin and splintery, in the
night air.
The lavatory stood under a fruit tree in early flower. The
blossoms drifted downwards, inconceivably fragile in the
moonlight.
'HughieT Jer's most charming, conciliatory voice.
'Yeah, whaff
'Let me out, mate, it's bloody awful in here.'
'Let you out in the morning.'
Hugh stalked away, frozen. His sockless feet rattled about
in the unlaced boots like blocks of ice.
246
He thought: 'I'll let the little bugger out in ten minutes.
Don't want him coming down again with pneumonia.'
He had hardly reached the bedroom before he heard the
distant crash of wood. He watched through the window.
'Did you hear something?' murmured Margaret.
'Branch fell off the pear tree,' answered Hughie. 'Go to
sleep, love.'
Grinning, he watched Jer emerge through the broken door
and crab away over the paddock. The moonlight was so sharp
Hughie thought there might be a frost.
He went back to bed and warmed himself against his wife.
If he had some faint feelings of longing, perhaps regret, he
put them out of his mind. A man made his own choice. He
went to sleep.
Margaret, who had been waiting for him to return, relaxed
and drifted contentedly between dreams and reality. Mrs
Darcy. Missus.
2 47,7