Eucalyptus (26 page)

Mr Cave had observed how Ellen stirred the moment a man sat in the chair and began a story; by her posture he could tell she was listening. He too would have to try something. If a story he told could bring her back to life their problems, whatever they were, were solved. He began racking his brains. It's always easier telling a story in the first person. The going feels altogether smoother. It can produce a rushing frankness in the storyteller, as if the I was actually revealing some distinct inner truth.

Mr Cave took his place late one morning. He seemed to gather his thoughts, then he shifted on the seat.

‘I have a story. It concerns my fiancée.'

Ellen stirred. Pleats and creases (out of the corner of her eye), and still not a hair out of place, combined to make his words unusually direct.

‘I very nearly got married. This was some time back, in Adelaide. Her name was Marjorie.

‘Small mouth, wiry hair. She had a thing about cashmere sweaters, I don't know why. Always asking me to get one whenever I went interstate. Father, a public servant. Department of Higher Education, if I'm not mistaken. It was some years back. Marjorie used to poke fun at my eucalyptic studies, and was always telling me to grow a moustache.' Mr Cave let out a laugh. ‘She could get on her high horse! Chose to differ with her on a matter, forget what, and she clocked me one.

‘Otherwise we got on all right. For several years we saw each other a few times a week.

‘One day she said the following: “I'm almost forty, I like being with you. But my family think I should be married. Let me know on Tuesday. Otherwise I'll have to find someone else.”

‘Words to that effect.

‘So there I was. On the Tuesday in question we had arranged to have a meal in the evening. Chinese, if my memory serves, in Hindley Street. We talked about this and that. Mostly I talked. She had her eye on the clock, couldn't sit still for a second. At one stage I thought she would rush out of the room. I waited until a few seconds before midnight before giving the answer. She was relieved, then for some reason she was angry at me. Next minute she started to work out the invitations and so on.

‘I remember thinking her face had softened. Quite beautiful, I felt like saying.'

Ellen had turned from the wall.

‘This funny thing happened.' Mr Cave had his arms folded. ‘Seemed simple enough at the time. A chap at the office put me onto this. Marjorie and I were seeing each other every day now. A lot of business to get through. I took her into a pawnshop, where they had a jar full of wedding rings.'

The story had been going smoothly enough, with suitable pauses. Ellen had her eyes open to the ceiling.

Mr Cave coughed. ‘Marjorie had her hand in the jar, bringing out rings, as if they were toffees. All looked the same to me. She apparently knew what she wanted. She had her hand still in the jar when she stopped, and seemed to be thinking. “No!” She suddenly pushed it away, “
I want eighteen carats
!” I didn't know what she was talking about. Then she bolted, left me standing in the shop, half a dozen wedding rings in my hands. Some years back.'

Ellen had her mouth open, not looking at him.

‘That,' Mr Cave rubbed his hands, ‘is about the only story I can think of that's happened to me.'

Holland who had listened to the end managed a laugh, ‘
Eighteen carats
? Why not twenty-four?'

He noticed Ellen had turned to the wall and was very still.

‘I think she could do with a rest,' Holland winced. ‘You'd better go.'

• 38 •
Crebra

THE NARROW
Leaf Red Ironbark: now there's an employment of no-nonsense
nouniness
. This eucalypt has a straight trunk and hard, deeply furrowed bark, like a strip of dark-grey clay dried out after being ploughed. The leaves are noticeably narrow. What isn't described is their ‘weeping habit' (a technical term); that is, leaves drooping in a shimmer of real melancholy.

This suspended air of perpetual sadness would be of little consequence, except the Narrow Leaf Red Ironbark is one of the most common eucalypts on earth; certainly they crowd the woodland areas of eastern Australia, all the way up to the top of Queensland. The botanical name recognised this in the very beginning:
crebra
from the Latin ‘frequent', ‘in close succession'.

Imagine the effect of such widespread statements of melancholy on the common mood. Needless to say it has permeated and reappeared in the long faces of our people, where the jaw has lengthened, and in words formed by almost imperceptible mouth movements, which often filter the mention of excessive emotions. It has shaded in khaki-grey our everyday stories, and when and how they are told, even the myths and legends, such as they are, just as surely as the Norwegians have been formed by snow and ice.

The eucalypts may be seen as daily reminders of the sadnesses between fathers and daughters, the deadpan stoicism of nature (which of course isn't stoicism at all), drought and melting asphalt in the cities. Each leaf hanging downwards suggests another hard-luck story or a dry line or joke to wave away the flies.

Only a small number of other eucalypts, those pale and stately beauties that have achieved fame on tea towels, postage stamps and calendars, correct the general impression of melancholy, as put forward by
E. crebra
and some of the other ironbarks. They bring a glow of light to a paddock, a rockface, a footpath in the city: the two Salmon Gums standing in the traffic island between the university and the cemetery in Melbourne! It only needs a few. Theirs is a majestic statement on what is alive and spreading: continuation.

And there is a parallel nearby. It may not be exaggeration to say that the formidable instinct in men to measure, which is often mistaken for pessimism, is counterbalanced by the unfolding optimism of women, which is nothing less than life itself; their endless trump card.

It is shown in miniature by the reverence women have for flowers, at its most concentrated when they look up and in recognition of their natural affinity accept flowers.

• 39 •
Confluens

ON THE
seventeenth day Ellen still lay in her room. No one had told a story to bring her back to life.

If anything Mr Cave's story only made matters worse.

As far as he was concerned he had won Ellen's hand according to the rules, the father looking over his shoulder every inch of the way. By any standard it was an impressive feat of memory and perseverance, a test so difficult Holland had not imagined any man passing it. If Mr Cave was to set out and do it all over again he might well fall by the wayside. And now at the entirely unexpected outcome he was too baffled and sincere to protest.

‘Making myself scarce,' he said in Ellen's hearing, Mr Cave wandered out to be where he felt most comfortable, among what he knew about more than anything—eucalypts, in all their truly remarkable variety.

For the moment there was little Holland could do. He was left contemplating his knuckles, which had never held much interest, and now appeared larger than normal. It was enough to provoke a grim laugh, one which shot up his shoulders, and for Ellen to wonder what in her situation could be so funny.

It was a matter of waiting. Time as always held the answers, was Holland's opinion. All things are processed by time. That was about all he could say to Mr Cave, a man he had grown to like, or at least respect. But at the first word, ‘Time…', he let it go.

There were things he wanted to say to Ellen. But they were obscure and difficult; and he was different from his daughter.

Ellen liked it when he took his place in the chair. At night his cigarette glowed in the dark as parts of the house creaked back to a lower set of temperatures, and he went over again in a vague circular murmur the sad story of her mother, for she too had faded away in a gradual seepage of paleness.

The more Ellen listened the less she understood her father… She knew him better than anyone else, she realised, yet she didn't really know him at all. Although she hardly knew the stranger—and there was every reason to connect ‘strange' to him—Ellen realised she knew him better than her own father.

At this revelation she lay with her eyes open, and mixed up with it was a clear view of the man from different angles, near trees. And all the time she concentrated on the cigarette glow in the dark, although it too began to fade. When it completely faded the man was gone—from the property, from being near her. All along it had been ridiculous, and she began blinking in fury.

Still she kept seeing his face and hearing the voice although she wanted perhaps to banish him. She didn't expect ever to see him again. She didn't feel like seeing anyone.

Pale and distant Ellen receded further into the depths of the sheets and pillows, and her beauty spots and their narcotic history of imprinting into the minds of men and fumbling their tongues—these legendary spots now came forward and seemed out of harmony with the rest of her face, and even other parts, such as her throat and tapering hands, as if the spots were too many and too dark.

The women from town and the surrounding properties could see the father was doing everything wrong; he didn't know what was going on. And he was taking too much notice of their doctor who could only think of liquids. But if anyone whispered that it was high time Ellen was moved to the nearest half-decent town, or over the mountains to Sydney, Ellen facing the wall firmly shook her head, ‘
I am not
…'

It was the most unusual illness Holland had seen in his daughter; it was hardly an illness at all. She hadn't vomited once, for example. If it was a sickness it was some sort of sleeping or semi-speechless sickness. Day after day she was more or less motionless, and spoke only a few words. It was all very well letting people in to sit down and try telling stories. He'd listened to a few himself, and when he turned and saw his daughter had fallen asleep he smiled; such a disappointed, severe sort of sleep.

Holland opened Ellen's room onto the verandah.

For a while he stood there; he normally looked at Ellen and spoke.

Halfway towards the first paddock was a familiar tree: with its weeping habit, its melancholy shiver of leaves on the droop, its cladding of
callous
ironbark, it always seemed resigned to waiting for the worst—for it to be all over—like a hyena in Africa.

When Ellen raised her head to look at her father she too became caught in the tree's gaze.

‘Feeling better?' he turned. ‘Good'—before she could answer.

Now he made an exaggerated search in the pockets of the old dark coat for matches, which Ellen wanted to say were already in one hand.

‘Mr Cave's still here, you know,' he said at last. ‘As he sees it, there's no reason for him to go, none whatever. He's a very patient fellow, a methodical one.' Her father blew out smoke. ‘If we had any spare cash we could put him on as gardener. He sure does know his way around the eucalyptus world.'

Any other time Ellen might have laughed.

‘He can't stand around twiddling his thumbs forever,' he added.

In the silence that followed, Holland felt the approach of something, a slowing down and a coming together: almost enough to brush the general awkwardness aside. The small sky-blue room, his daughter's world, existed in equilibrium with the park-like arrangement of trees and the swaying mat-coloured grass outside. Ellen almost felt it too. Whatever it was may have flowed slowly from her. If nothing else the uncertain idea she had of herself had diminished, her resistance gone: water spreading in all directions onto a flood plain. It was not possible to spend the rest of her life in bed, not her best years.

Later when her father came with tea on a tray and went to close the verandah doors Ellen spoke, ‘I'll see Mr Cave first thing in the morning, tell him.'

She turned to the wall and held both warm breasts in her hands. So finally amazed was she at her immovable father she couldn't imagine talking to him—what to say? In his old coat he looked thinner, she had noticed, which only illustrated his stubbornness. Then she began to feel sorry for him, her father, sorry for his stubbornness, which was how she closed her eyes in the dark.

‘Now, you might be wondering…'

Ellen thought she was dreaming.

If she opened her eyes the voice would go away.

His voice had come in from nothing, no warning, no ‘Good evening' or anything.

‘Are you asleep?'

She had her eyes open, still facing the wall. The voice was very close. Now she was aware of every familiar scrape and blur.

To think that he could just stroll in! The surprise was physical, a surge. Where had he been? Why? He shouldn't come near her at all. In the middle of the night he was in the room.

He had let himself in from the verandah.

She wanted him to go, she wanted him to stay.

On the verge of saying it, and sending him away, she shifted a little, but didn't turn.

‘Why are you here?'

Although it was dark the angles of the room converged towards him, and he displayed impressive sangfroid, the first requirement for Officer Material.