Lantana Lane (26 page)

For an hour or so after this no one pretended that it was anything but a picnic. The only dryish places to sit were Herbie's packing-case—to which he gallantly conducted old Mrs. Hawkins—and the Tree itself, so they all strung themselves out along its trunk like sparrows on a wire, eating scones, drinking tea, swopping anecdotes about cyclones, and talking shop. The sun—earlier so cowed and pallid—took heart as it climbed the sky, pouring down abundant warmth, and sucking up moisture from the earth in a fine, silver steam. Colours glowed and ripened under its caress; leaves whispered and shone; grass sat up and sparkled; coats and cardigans came off; optimism revived, and self-respect returned; no doubt—no doubt at all, we have a perfect winter climate.

But alas, the devastation wrought by Celestine could not be very long forgotten. Work was waiting—not only here, but behind the lantana all along the Lane—and at last, by unspoken but unanimous consent, the Tree ceased to be a seat, and was once more acknowledged as an obstacle.

Ken declared that what this job needed was a cross-cut saw, not a lot of ruddy axes, and Joe said too right it was, and he reckoned Bill Weedon would be glad to lend them his. Jack observed gently that Bill would let them have it like a shot, but the trouble was to get hold of it; so far as he knew nobody had ever got up or down that last hill on The Other Road just after a cyclone. Aub said truculently, without thinking, that he'd give anyone any odds they liked that his jeep would do it with chains, and Henry replied, tapping the tree trunk with his brush-hook : “Chains and wings, old boy—chains and wings.” When the laugh against Aub subsided, Dick said there must surely be another cross-cut saw somewhere in Dillillibill, and Ken assured him that there was—down at Jeff Jenkins' place on The Goat Track. After this there was a brief, baffled silence until Tristy Bell said simply that maybe a saw would be better if they had one, but seeing they didn't have a saw, what was there against doing the job with axes seeing they did have axes? No one offered any objection to this line of reasoning, though a few looked dubious, and they all began to study the Tree again.

Bruce said wistfully that if only someone could tell him the weight of a cubic foot of it, he could work out whether his Land Rover and Aub's jeep could shift the log when they got it out. Aub snorted, and asked why worry about working it out, because the Rover and the Jeep between them could shift anything. Jack then mildly intervened, explaining that the log wouldn't be
that
heavy, because he hadn't meant to cut it
here
and
here,
but
there
and
there.
Gwinny promptly objected that if they did this, there would be only room for one car at a time to get through and Ken exclaimed : “Well, blow me down, what more do you want?”

It needed hardly a moment's reflection for everyone to realise that nothing more could possibly be wanted; it wasn't, Aub said, as if a bloke were ever in so much of a hurry that he couldn't pull up and wait for another bloke to get through. So the men took up their axes, and ran their thumbs along the edges, while the women bustled about clearing the trunk of mugs and coats and packets of tobacco, and threatening to send the children straight home if they got in the way. Then Aub announced loudly that he had an idea, and this idea turned out to be that they should make a contest of the chopping—north side of the Lane versus south side—how about it? This suggestion was at once vociferously acclaimed by the children; the women eagerly approved it; the men grinned, protested, looked at each other, grinned some more, and finally said they didn't see why not.

With Joe and Uncle Cuth excluded on the grounds of disability and age, it worked out very neatly into two teams of six, and after some consultation it was agreed that each team should put its men in, two at a time, one on each side of the trunk, to chop in shifts. Jack said they had better knock a bit of the mud and rubbish out from under the tree to let the water get away, and this was rapidly done by Tristy and Gaily, despite some cries of bitter protest from the children.

Then Aunt Isabelle vehemently objected that the proposed arrangement would not be sporting, for the north side—with Tim, Ken, Henry, Tristy, Gally and the less youthful, but equally redoubtable King Kong to make up the half-dozen—would enjoy an unfair advantage over the south side, whose champions, with the exception of Bill Hawkins, were all of mature age. This provoked an indignant chorus of denial from all men, women and children of the south side, and an inevitable offer from Aub to give anyone odds of ten to one on Souths. For a moment it seemed that the takers would be both numerous and clamorous, but it was remembered in time by a few—who conveyed it by means of winks, frowns and nudges to the others—that Alf was unshakably of the opinion that betting wasn't right; so there was a little delay while those who felt that it would be a crying shame not to have a bob on, this way or that, went aside and negotiated in pairs so discreetly that Alf was able to appear quite unaware of what was going on.

Then Gwinny—unanimously recognised as the only person capable of keeping her eyes on a watch without having to take them from the axemen—was declared time-caller; Jack and Ken were appointed captains of their respective sides, and drew for positions on the trunk; the spectators disposed themselves in rows on either side of the road, and the teams stood ready to begin. It cannot be denied that Norths had the stronger team, but fortunately the draw had given Souths the position nearer to the head of the Tree, where its girth was slightly less, so everyone anticipated a close and exciting contest.

We only wish you could have seen and heard it. The barrackers never stopped yelling for a moment from start to finish. It is true that the women were sometimes yelling less to encourage their menfolk than to call their children down off the ends of the trunk, or out of the way of flying chips, but this made no difference, because on such occasions words do not matter, but only noise. And so far as noise went, the honours were dead even. No one watched more closely, or screamed more effectively than Gwinny, who had a husband and two sons to cheer, yet her call of “TIME!” rose punctually above the uproar to release two pairs of panting heroes, and summon two more to the battle. Old Mrs. Hawkins was at first diffident about her vocal capacity, but when she heard Uncle Cuth's performance, she determined not to be outdone, and was not, though she wore red flannel round her throat for days afterwards. Norths had the advantage of six children to South's five, but Jeremy habitually relies upon his smile to express pleasure, adding in moments of extreme excitement only a kind of subdued twittering, and Jennifer found some scones left over in a basket; whereas all five of South's juvenile supporters have voices like steam engines, and gave undivided attention to using them. Norths claimed both dogs, but Jake (though normally far more vociferous than Butch), was not much help, for he leapt, reared and plunged about so madly that he had breath only now and then for a few gasping yelps; Butch, however, being older and wiser, sat like a rock at Joe's feet, and barked steadily in a fierce baritone. Only Nelson, up aloft, was silent—and very fidgety. In his experience it was kookaburras, not humans, who made a row in chorus, and this pandemonium therefore appeared to him as a monstrous reversal of natural law.

As for the contestants, we do not suppose that more indomitable spirit, or more heroic effort has ever marked a wood-chopping event in any part of the continent. The finer points of technique might, perhaps, be more in evidence at the Royal Agricultural Show; connoisseurs might have detected in our teams some deficiency in style and polish; Herbie's physique might have been judged too slight, and Aub's too rotund, to permit of really classic execution; a ruthless critic might have said that Dick's condition was not what it might have been, that Bruce's blows did not always fall with perfect accuracy, owing to the way his glasses kept misting over, and that Henry wasted wind he could ill afford by laughing; purists might even have objected that the bulging muscles of Alf and his sons did not quite make up for a certain savage and overhurried violence, and that Tim, on the other hand, exhibited more elegance than speed. But we defy anyone to fault the performance of Jack and Ken who, valiantly supported by Bill and Gaily, leapt in last, to provide the thrilling climax.

The great trunk, now almost severed in two places, shuddered beneath their blows. They had discarded their shirts, and sweat streamed down their backs. The children, dancing in an agony of excitement, splashed mud over everyone. Jake dived hysterically between Tony's legs, and upset him in a puddle. Uncle Cuth screeched angrily that he had never seen such a lotta lousy chopping in his life, and Joe bellowed at him to shut his trap. Nelson succumbed at last to panic, took off from his perch, and headed for the scrub as though jet-propelled.

Now it could only be a matter of seconds. The axemen put forth their reserves of strength, and chopped as if the price of pines depended on their efforts. The barrackers, filling their bursting lungs, produced a volume of sound which was heard across the gully in Dillillibill. At this moment, Aunt Isabelle, shrieking encouragement to her beloved Moolliner, clutched at the nearest arm, and realised that its owner seemed to be making no noise at all. Shocked, she turned to stare, and astonishment paralysed her vocal chords in mid-scream—for she flattered herself that she could recognise
l'amour
when she saw it gazing starrily from a maiden's eyes. “
Holà!
” said Aunt Isabelle to herself. “What is this that we have here? No, no!
Pas possible!
“Yet the signs were unmistakable. The face of the lily maid as she gazed at Lancelot can never have betrayed her heart more surely than did that of her namesake now, as she gazed at Ken. And at this moment, as the trunk fell apart under his final blow, and he stood back triumphant, his eyes immediately sought EElaine, found her, and, for an electric second, communed intimately with hers. Aunt Isabelle lifted her shoulders to her ears in eloquent acknowledgment of the unbelievable. Ah, the cunning ones! That they should have arrived at the stage of exchanging such glances without the Lane perceiving what was afoot! That the Lane should have seen Ken's bulldozed road, and yet failed to appreciate the advantages of a trysting place so secluded, where none passed by! But surely the good Gwinny, whom nothing escaped, had known all, for was she not now glancing from Ken to EElaine with an expression the most maternally indulgent? . . . Aunt Isabelle whisked a happy tear from her eye, and resolved to compose that very night a long letter to Mrs. Jackson, acquainting her that the problem of Ken's love-life had found its own solution here in Lantana Lane.

Norths had won—but only by a whisker. The middle section of the trunk lay free, and the twelve champions stood back to contemplate their handiwork, and receive the congratulations of their supporters. But Ken (perhaps a little above himself as a result of that stimulating glance which Aunt Isabelle had intercepted), suddenly jumped forward again, seized a crowbar, and called out: “Well, come on, fellers, what are we waiting for?” They were waiting for the Land Rover and the jeep, and the older men, at least, would willingly have gone on waiting. But in Tristy, Gally and Bill that chemistry of youth which immediately replaces expended energy was powerfully at work; they had ergs and ergs available already, and they hastened to range themselves beside Ken. After that, of course, no one could hang back. Levering with crowbars and shoving with shoulders, they all attacked the log. “One—two—three—
heave
!” chanted Bill, and it moved. “One—two—three—
heave
!” chanted everyone together, and it moved some more. The kids crowded into small spaces, and heaved too. Jake—having for some reason taken a dislike to the log—pranced at their heels, seizing every opportunity to rush in and bite it. Uncle Cuth stood well out in the road making gestures like a traffic cop, and crying : “Bring 'er round a bit, can'tcher? Whatcher lettin' 'er slip back for? Spare me days, I never seen such a lotta goofy muddlers!” But the north end swung slowly towards the west, and the heavers, encouraged, toiled with a will. “One—two—three—
heave
!” sang the womenfolk. “One—two—three—
heave
! “yelled the children. Aub called out gaspingly to Bruce that in case he still wanted to know, a cubic foot of the blanky thing weighed a bleeding ton; and Henry was heard to mutter that they might as well be Neanderthal men for all the good it did them living in the machine age. But despite such small symptoms of disaffection, everyone kept on heaving, with the happy result that the log was at last manœuvred into a position where it was hardly in the way at all. And the road was open.

It was a proud moment. Aunt Isabelle felt that the last few days had richly fulfilled her expectations of the pioneering life. They had been in peril, they had suffered, they had found themselves cut off from the world—but by their own united and courageous efforts, they had triumphed. She looked in some astonishment at the other women, who were busily packing baskets, and assembling children, for she thought it fitting that someone should now deliver a brief oration. But the only valedictory remark came from Jack, who called over his shoulder as he walked off up the hill:

“Okay, Bruce, now you can nick in and get our meat.”

That evening, just after dark, Joe came limping down from his shack, and scrabbled about in the lantana near the Tree. Herbie saw him climb the hill again with something under his arm; he was a little surprised, for he had never suspected Joe of aspiring to Gracious Living.

R
ECENTLY
another pair of decent young blokes from the Department of Main Roads turned up, and this time they came right into the Lane. But they drove no pegs; they were equipped only with armfuls of maps and papers which—to judge from their hot and harassed faces—were driving them nuts. They called at several of the houses, bade us good morning, and explained rather cryptically that they were just checking.

We courteously accepted this mysterious statement, offered them tea, of course, and tried not to betray the curiosity which was consuming us. But when they began, very civilly, to ask us questions, we immediately understood the reason for the corrugation of their youthful brows. They were enquiring, if you please, about boundaries.

Now the thing which infallibly distinguishes newcomers from old inhabitants of these parts is an absurd preoccupation with boundaries. They soon get over it, but just at first they exhibit a quite morbid anxiety to discover exactly where their properties end, and those of their next-door neighbours begin; and this is a matter which—though simple enough in the suburbs—is pretty complicated in Dillillibill.

Along the Lane we know our boundaries all right; that is to say, we know they are somewhere in the lantana. There are long stretches, too, between our properties, where a fence marks the division perfectly clearly; and it goes without saying that when a boundary fence is also the fence of a cow-paddock, we attend most scrupulously to its maintenance, so how the cows keep on getting out all the same is a problem upon which it is quite fruitless to ponder.

But all our farms slope down more or less precipitously towards the creeks, and since most of us have under cultivation as much land as we can manage, if not as much as we need, we leave the steepest acres to the native scrub. Down there, in those dim, damp, tangled, primeval fastnesses, we have, of course, other boundaries—but just exactly where, we wouldn't know.

And why should we? When Dick Arnold first came, he felt the usual urge to determine how much of what he surveyed he was monarch of, and he thought he would begin by following down the fence between his place and Dawsons'. Luckily he encountered Aub before he had gone very far. Aub was picking pines, but he dumped his basket, and came pushing along between the rows with all the alacrity of a man not only willing to help, but glad to be interrupted.

“Boundary? . . .” he repeated, when Dick had explained the purpose of his expedition. “Well, there you've got me, mate. Went looking for it myself once, but I gave it away when I got down near the creek. Got hung up in a lawyer-vine for long enough to think it out, see? Said to myself: ‘Aub, that boundary's
there.
You've seen it on a map. It's not going to run away. It'll pay you better to leave it alone, and get on with your chipping.'”

“You can't just follow this fence down? . . .” asked Dick wistfully.

“You can follow it down as far as it
goes,
and that's into that big patch of lantana down there.”

“It doesn't go into the scrub at all, then?”

“What'd be the use? Only reason for a fence is to keep something in or out. Right?”

“Well, mainly, but it marks the line, too.”

“Point is, does the line need to be marked? If you're a grazier—well, then you have to have a fence, and it matters if it's a coupla feet out, this way or that. Lot of grass in a two-foot strip a mile long. But we're not graziers—more's the pity. We're not trying to keep anything in. Or out. Cows don't go in the scrub; nothing for them to eat. It's no skin off our nose if the line's a yard or ten yards out, so long as we aren't
using
the land. What do we care if there isn't a line at all? And if you did find it, and bust your bank balance putting a fence along it, what'd happen to the flaming thing? It'd rot away, that's what, just give it a few wets, and it'd rot clean away. Look, sport, you come on up to the house, and meet the wife, and have a cupper tea, and forget about boundaries. All you'll do down there is tear your pants.”

Thus was Dick's error in thinking swiftly and painlessly corrected, and in some such manner have most of us, at one time or another, adjusted our attitude to boundaries. Our scrub is God's Little Acre, and so far as we are concerned, God is welcome to it. Ken Mulliner did clear a bit of his once for bananas, and it was not until he had finished planting that he began to wonder if about a quarter of it mightn't be in the Bells' place; so just as a matter of form, he summoned Alf to have a look, and Alf said he thought it probably was, but no matter, and how were Ken's new pines coming along? Little accidents of this kind are bound to happen now and then. The classic example occurred out on The Other Road after the Jones and the Warburtons both sold their farms at about the same time, and the new owners, running true to form, and messing about with plans, and tapes and compasses, discovered that a good half-acre of Warburton's pines had been planted on Jones' land. But when further investigation revealed that over on the other side of the ridge about an equal number of Jones' pines were doing nicely on Warburton's land, they very sensibly decided to let well alone.

So we were not always able to answer very explicitly the questions asked by the two young men, whose names were Don and Denis. But it was only at the Arnolds' and the Dawson's that they made searching enquiries about the scrub boundaries—and this we regarded as grimly significant. Aub naturally offered at once to get a brush-hook and take them down to have a look round for themselves, but they thanked him, and said it would not be necessary at present; they were just checking.

It is inevitable that there should be a difference in approach between those trained to see a boundary as a line clearly drawn upon a sheet of paper, and those taught by custom and experience to regard it as being, like the bunyip, a myth somewhere down in the scrub. Consequently, although the Arnolds and the Dawsons did their best to be helpful, and although the boys seemed appreciative of their efforts, the interviews were not very illuminating to anyone. All, of course, were intellectually aware that a relationship exists between place and map. But Dick and Aub, in whose view the map possessed less substance and reality than the place, would keep on pointing out the window; while Don and Denis, to whom the place seemed less important, and much less reliable than the map, were extremely reluctant to lift their eyes from it.

When they did, it was not to see what was being pointed at, but to regard the pointers with a forlorn and baffled expression. Did Mr. Dawson, they asked, not know where his Pegs were?” Too right, I do,” declared Aub roundly, and went on to explain that they were buried somewhere down there under the accumulated forest debris of the years—if, indeed, anything remained of them at all, which he considered most unlikely.

The boys looked shocked. After all, said their reproachful eyes, other decent blokes of their craft had once, long, long ago, struggled about in that gully, braving the lawyer-vines and leeches in order to fix and mark those boundaries—and for what? . . . So that Aub, scratching his head, should give their successors no greater comfort than to say that, so far as he knew, the line between his place and Dick's went just above that Strangler Fig—or maybe just below it; so that Dick, shrugging his shoulders, should confess that he wasn't sure, but he thought his south-east corner peg must have been a bit across Late Tucker Creek, where there was a big rock beside a Gympie tree.

The boys stared, sighed, and turned once more to their maps, which treated these matters with rigid exactitude, and had no use for rocks, Figs or Gympie trees. But their very silence was an accusation of fecklessness—if not something worse; for it was plain that in their fraternity Pegs were sacred objects, to be guarded no less reverently than Israel guarded the Ark of the Covenant.

This being so, it was no wonder that they looked wan. Denis confided to Dick that not only boundaries in the scrub were causing trouble. There, though they might be elusive, they did, presumably, stay still; but over on the steep pastures of the opposite ridge near Tooloola, they slipped. And what was the good, asked Denis sadly, of finding a Peg when it might be thirty yards downhill from where it was last week?

We all grieved them, even when their researches were concerned only with frontages and corner posts along the Lane. We thought we knew all about those, and spoke of them with blithe assurance, but it turned out that even here things were not quite as they should have been. A corner of Jack's front garden, opposite the green ute, had somehow strayed out into the road, and a strip of the road had somehow found its way into the Kennedys' fowlyard. Doug Egan's truck had skidded one wet day, and knocked out the rickety corner post between Bells' and Griffiths', and it now appeared that when Alf and Henry put it back, they had just shifted it a foot or two eastward to give Henry a bit more room for his gate. And Herbie's whole frontage was completely crazy because—as old Mrs. Hawkins recalled—Mrs. Herbie had liked two trees which once grew on the roadside, so Herbie had run his fence outside them to keep them safe.

But our reasonable explanations only made Don and Denis look more baffled than ever, and we began to feel that they had been given insufficient briefing in the facts of life. Leaves fall, damp wood rots, and steep hillsides slip; these are but natural hazards which any Peg must be prepared to face. We suspected that these lads had not been warned of the extreme disillusionment which awaits those who confuse theory with fact, or taught that although a boundary on paper is,
per se,
an admirable thing, a boundary on the ground is transient and unreliable, being subject not only to the assaults of time, but also to the incorrigible disorderliness of human beings. In short, we could discern in them no symptom of awareness that the art of living is the art of continual little adjustments; that while perfect theory is quite proper, it must submit to being fiddled with in practice, lest society become a strait-jacket.

But they were certainly triers. Kneeling side by side on the floor, heads down, sterns up, they pored in an agony of concentration over their vast, crackling and intractable map. They traced laborious paths with pencil tips along mazy lines peppered with microscopic figures. Muttering together in desperate undertones, they compared this map with a second, and both with a third, and shook their heads unhappily. Time after time Don pounced upon some promising hieroglyph and—while Denis hurriedly consulted a sheet of paper—held it imprisoned beneath his hot forefinger, only to release it at last, with a heavy sigh, and pursue another down the labyrinthine ways.

We could not but feel sorry for them—and yet, as Aub pointed out later, it was their own fault if they had to sprain their brains because, when you came to think of it, why call a farm Sub
I
Res
I
Sub
2
& of Res C & of Res
2
Sub
2
Res B Sub
I
Por
IIV
, when you can just call it Dawsons'? In any case, there was little we could do to help except stand on the end of the map to stop it rolling up—but this we did, with a patience which was surely commendable, and even, in the circumstances, magnanimous. For we all knew that this was the beginning of the end. At the Kennedys' Marge offered them beer instead of tea, because she thought they might see their problems in better perspective with the aid of a little alcohol; Herbie actually abandoned a spider he was watching to try and comfort them about his frontage; and Henry was moved by their distress to suggest kindly that it might be less trouble not to make The Deviation at all.

But at this the boys, exchanging startled and embarrassed glances, hastily protested utter ignorance of any deviation, and repeated, with great earnestness, that they were just checking.

We do not know to this day what they checked, or what, if anything, was the result. It was not for them to make premature announcements concerning major public works, and despite our subtle probings, they gave nothing away. Upon this matter, so nearly touching our lives, we expect no further enlightenment until some day one of us goes in for the mail, and returns to distribute notices of resumption all along the Lane.

We shall survive it. When we discuss the matter among ourselves, it is still mostly the compensation that we talk about, and to hear the note of relish in our voices, you might think we anticipate this great event with the unmixed approbation which all good citizens accord to manifestations of progress.

But never forget that we are Anachronisms. We are not entirely convinced that speed and convenience add up to civilisation. Should we be required to state just what does add up to civilisation, our tongues would halt, for we have never given the matter much serious thought. But not all the triumphs of science and technology, nor all the persuasiveness of mass communications, have quite succeeded in banishing from our minds a vague notion that in order to become civilised, one must, first of all, remain human. And being human, we feel, has at least something to do with treading on earth, getting sweaty, seeing the sun rise, making things grow, having animals around, using one's muscles, taking one's time, getting on with one's neighbours and feeling no need of tranquillising pills. Nor have we failed to note that the faster we move, and the more conveniences we acquire, the less of our brief, precious and irreplaceable time we have to call our own.