A River Town (46 page)

“Where is she now?” asked Mamie.

“She is in her room at the Commercial,” said Old Burke. “On retreat. Reading a devotional book as she should have done earlier. Flirtatious, you see. She’s flirtatious by nature.”

He glanced at Molly. He blamed his young wife for some of it, for a lack of gravity.

“Well, Jesus,” Kitty protested, “women
are
. Need to be too. To get you bloody crowd going.”

Molly sat back in her chair. She looked very tired. “Ask us the questions you’ve got to ask us,” she told them. “Who’s the father, for example?”

“Well,” said Old Burke, supplying the answer for his wife to get it done with. “She won’t say. And I remarked to her, does this mean there is more than one blackguard? And instead of a clear answer, I get tears.”

Molly said, “I’m glad I was there at Pee Dee. Men can take a hectoring approach.”

“And a bloody man is behind this,” said Kitty, lightening the discussion with wise and emphatic shakes of the head. “There’s only one Virgin Birth. The story’s used up.”

Both the other women laughed guiltily at this blasphemy from Kitty. Old Burke looked at Kitty with amazement.

“She’s foolishly protecting her lover,” said Molly with a twisted mouth.

“Don’t dignify him with a word like
lover,
” growled Old Burke. “He’s a brute and a bloody ram.”

As if Old Burke had never ridden high. But this was an awful and wilful scandal, Tim could see.

Old Burke said, “God, she flirts even with that Indian bastard, what’s his name? Haberdash? Molly herself’s no better.”

Mamie instantly flushed. No delays in the Kenna crowd showing their feelings. “I have news on that,” said Mamie. “I am engaged to Mr. Habash and don’t appreciate wordplay on his name, Mr. Burke.”

Molly lowered her fine eyes. She hadn’t been told after all. Old Burke paused in gouging away at his pipe.

“Mr. Habash is receiving instruction in the Faith,” Mamie added.

Molly wiped at a sudden sweat on her upper lip. “He’s hung around all of us, you know,” she scoffed, wanting to draw blood. “Until he found someone simple-minded enough.”

There was jealousy here. It betrayed Molly into letting on to things she wouldn’t let on to in her normal wisdom. Jealousy of the hawker!

“Well, thank you,” Mamie said, flaming. “That’s a grand estimation of me …”

But she stopped there because Old Burke threw his pipe down on the plate before him.

“You bloody Kenna women have gone utterly astray in your bloody minds!” he yelled.

The outburst brought a little silence at first. But it was a rope thrown to the sisters. Molly decided to sit forward and grab it. “So my family are to take the blame for this tragedy? For spoiling your daughter?”

She blazed and it was not all rage at Old Burke. But he served as the first victim and deserved to as well, the old fool. Molly would punish him at length later as well. He’d be treated to the turned shoulder at night when she got back to Pee Dee.

Old Burke could foresee this and became more plaintive. “I just think there’s an air of conspiracy gets going when women are together.” He’d widened the accusation from just the Kenna girls to the whole gender. “It isn’t always for the best, you know.”

The three women frowned communally at him. Of course this was Mamie’s first meeting with Old Burke. Old Burke was Molly’s fortune, the rumour which had brought Mamie through the Atlantic, the Indian, the Southern Ocean and up the Pacific coast into the Macleay. She had given Old Burke and Molly as an excuse for her migration. It was what Red and Mrs. Kenna had used to soothe their aged tears. This dismal old cow-cocky!

Molly ignored him and spoke to her sisters. “She reckons she’ll raise the child herself in Sydney.”

“All bloody well,” said Old Burke. “But she’s bloody young to pass off as a widow!”

“We will give her every support,” said Molly.

“Goes without saying,” muttered Old Burke.

“She has made it totally clear to me … totally clear,” Molly asserted, “that she will not marry for this cause. Whoever it is … the fellow, she won’t say. And she has made it clear that she won’t marry.”

“She’s been to confession and the sacraments,” growled Old Burke, as if this had a bearing on her decision.

Molly nodded. “That was this morning. And we’re off on
Burrawong
tomorrow, she and I. By all accounts, it’s fumigated to the last square inch. We’ll have to walk the deck pretending we’re overtaken by an urge to see the Sydney autumn fashions.”

“It’s too bloody believable in her case,” said Old Burke. “Believable she would get an urge like that!”

Tim remembered how well despite their arguments the girl had minded his children. “Give her my warmest wishes,” he said. “And tell her if she should need anything …”

“Yes,” Kitty said, finishing his sentence. “She mustn’t hesitate.”

All the party looked at each other understandingly. They thought his quarantine had left him clumsy, put his social timing off.

“But can’t we go and see her, Molly?” Kitty asked. “Mamie and myself? Sure we could see her. She might be embarrassed by Tim. But Mamie and me …”

Molly said of course. Then she turned back to Mamie. “Sister, do you love this Habash?”

“What an idiot question! I could put the darling little fellow in my pocket and walk the earth’s highways with him.”

“And do you trust him?”

“He’s a bloody scamp and a charmer. But he has taken to instruction like Cardinal Newman!”

Molly looked aged, and shook her head.

“Then God bless you both!”

Everyone but Old Burke could read what all this was. She would not be able to flirt with Bandy when next he came to Pee Dee. The bush was narrowing in on her.

The visit to Ellen was arranged for that evening, and Molly and Old Burke got up to leave. As they went through the house and store towards Belgrave Street, Old Burke hung back a second.

“Fellows tell me you’ve been hugely political, Tim,” he commented with the usual above-human-folly frown.

“It’s nonsense,” Tim told him.

“No. Be careful. You don’t think you’re political, but you bloody are by nature. Keep clear of it all. None of it’s worth a toss. Land is the whole story.”

Blood came to Tim’s face. “Tell
them
, bugger it!” He pointed off
indefinitely towards the powerful and complicated town. “Tell your flash friends to let me live.”

Old Burke stared dolefully. “I think your troubles have got to you, Tim. It might be the start of an education.”

The self-important old streak of misery went and joined Molly, who waited for him by the pavement.

“Thank God I don’t have to ask you for favours,” cried Tim after him.

Molly looked away, but Kitty laughed.

The visit to Ellen was made and Mamie and Kitty came back home to drink tea with a look of mutual placation, of the old sisterly unity, on their faces.

“She really won’t name the feller,” said Molly. “Says if she does Old Burke will force a marriage.”

Both sisters seemed disappointed by this. They wanted to know for knowing’s sake as well. They could have been savage to him in the street when he came to town.

Next morning, a drogher took the Burke women off with Captain Reid and the other passengers, up the river to where
Burrawong
had moored. Tim’s letter travelled by the same ship. Captain Reid had already announced in the
Argus
that
Burrawong
was fitted with new anti-rat hawsers of the kind which had been developed to combat the plague in Calcutta two years before. They had come to the North Coast Steamship Navigation Company too late for lovely Winnie.

A full week after his release from quarantine, Tim sent Bandy to the hospital with a basket of puddings and biscuits for Sister Raymond, and then himself resolutely took from the bookcase the envelope with the inscribed photograph of Miss Florence Meades playing Young Arthur, put it in his breast pocket, decided not to wear a tie, and walked down Smith Street past the curtained Southern Cross Billiard Rooms, the Greek cafe, the Good Templars’, and took to the stairwell—beside Holt’s Ladies’ Fashions—to Ernie Malcolm’s office.

At the head of the stairs, Miss Pollack, from the Rudder’s Hill Pollacks in East, still kept Ernie’s outer office.

He told her he wanted to see Ernie.

“Could I have your name, sir?” she asked in her bush-flash, piss-elegant manner. Her parents would be his future customers with any luck, but he was tired of dancing around people.

“Tim Shea,” said Tim. “I was in plague quarantine with Ernie and his wife.” Watch it or I’ll breathe on you! he implied.

And she
was
chastened by such a pronouncement, and went and spoke to Ernie, who then appeared haggard in his dove-grey suit at the door of his office, looked out and said, “Oh, yes, Tim. Could you hold hard a few moments?”

As Ernie spoke his eyes darted around towards unseen things in the office. His manner said, “Expect nothing.” Then he near-closed the door on his visitor.

Some minutes passed, but Tim would not take the seat Miss Pollack recommended to him. He wanted Ernie to get a sense of a restless presence in his outer office, and indeed Ernie seemed to, coming to the door at last and wearily murmuring, “Yes, Tim,” ushering him in then with a slack hand.

From Ernie’s office you got a view of the butter factory and the laneway leading to
Burrawong
’s berth at Central wharf, left vacant—or else taken up by droghers—through the influence of plague. The walls of Ernie’s office were covered with bright certificates, some of them from Melbourne, from municipal councils there. An apostle of service all along Australia’s south-east coast.

“Sit, sit, sit,” sighed Ernie, gesturing to the visitor’s chair, going behind his desk which was covered by files, the ramparts behind which he defended himself against gusts of disabling loss and accusation. He looked once out of the window to the river, but then faced Tim.

“Ward mates, Tim, eh?”

There seemed to be great weariness not so much in the eyes as in the lower face, in a hang-dogginess there.

“You have no bad effects from all that?” asked Ernie.

“No,” said Tim. “Since I had no credit before, and I still have none.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ernie, staring out at the river again for an answer. “Have you thought of going to Queensland, Tim? It’s said to be full of opportunity up there for people of your type.”

“My type? What is my bloody type?”

Ernie shrugged. “You take pretty quick offence at a man who means you no harm at all.”

“You yourself mentioned a reference when we were together in that place.”

“Yes, Tim. A random impulse of generosity.”

“Yes. But it had the features of an undertaking, Ernie.”

“Let me tell you it won’t do you any good. Your credit is shot through the head for some time yet. A solitary reference from me, even if I appended all my honorary secretaryships, would not cut sufficient ice for you, Tim. I must tell you this frankly.”

It was probably the case. All his charitable vanities, all his fussiness about asking for bills to be paid. It had ended with him being swept from the business map of the Macleay.

“What about for my wife then?”

“What, Tim?”

“What if you wrote a reference—to my dictation if you don’t mind—for my wife?”

“You want your wife to be your boss?”

It was what on reflection he wanted: the humble arrangement by which he’d be disciplined and saved. Better than depending on a future brother-in-law.

He said that. “Bloody sight nicer than the alternatives, Ernie.”

“But I don’t know your wife. I think you should just go, actually. Declare your true situation. Leave the business to be picked over by creditors. Queensland, Tim. That’s the go.”

Tim sat back. He was content for the moment with the strong tide of his blood.

“Why don’t
you
go to bloody Queensland, Ernie?”

“I am, despite everything, settled in here.” Ernie pointed to his walls of certificates. “These are the signs of the man I am. Bereaved, Tim. But solid.” He leaned forward, a man to be congratulated.

At once Tim took from his breast pocket the envelope with the photograph of Missy as a boy. He took the picture out and held it up. Ernie stared at it.

“You notice,” said Tim, “Winnie was careful that you should be saved. She scratched out the inscription. She wrote on the back,
but named no one except the girl. Who badly needed to be named.”

Ernie stared at him and had the grace to cover his eyes with his left hand.

“How did you bloody get it?”

“She asked me to post it. But we were quarantined first.”

“You’re right, Tim,” Ernie murmured very calmly. “Winnie very loyal.”

“I just want some reasonable help,” Tim reminded him.

But Ernie raised his head and seemed to begin arguing with an unseen audience. “Tyler’s Touring Company. Premier British Touring Group. From triumphs in New Zealand and before that Fiji, before that again America! Acclaimed in California. Travelling players. Jesus, travelling! Grand repute. Crowned bloody heads. By appointment to the court of.
Young Arthur
. Tyler’s Touring Company. She came to the house as Young Arthur, wearing actor’s rags from the Tyler Company. Asked for me and Winnie. Primrose said we were not there. Winnie didn’t actually meet her. Poor bloody Primrose did the turning of her away. But Winnie watching from deep inside the house thought straight away,
That’s an actress playing a boy
. And it was, of course. Astounded that dolt of a sailor Reid didn’t spot it straight off. The role of Young Arthur famous on three continents. Tyler’s a company, of course, you’d never find touring a bushweek place like this! Cities! Golden harbours.” Ernie stood up. “I’d no idea at all Winnie found the picture.” He shook his head. “Only safe thing with women is to have
no
secrets.”

Tim put the picture away in its envelope and looked up at standing Ernie.

“For an ugly bastard I have known beautiful women,” Ernie told him, his eyes softened and glistening.

“This was a girl though, Ernie.”