The Ballad of Desmond Kale (19 page)

RANKINE WENT OUT OVERNIGHT ON his next try at finalising Joe's loading. Without too much trouble this time he located the trader. Joe was not as far off as he'd thought, only stacking corn at a place by the river, near the landing stage where the tent and boards were bundled ready. They greeted each other with boisterous pleasure. Joe was immune to neither risk nor the promise of profit. With Rankine, friendship tipped the scales both ways.

To Joe, Rankine was the man who wanted his waggonload of station goods carried farther into unknown country than anyone else. There was decisiveness and good humour in the officer, and — what spoke as strongly to Joe — a willingness to pay holey dollars in advance, which Joe had used to secure his bullocky, Mick, for the entire coming season. Joe had no idea that Martha, his exquisite forger wielding pens and inks, was also tangled in Rankine's interests. Nor was Martha aware, when she did her best, what was intended to fall out. Six months ago she fabricated versions of military warrants used to spring Kale from Mundowey forest. Martha's ‘His Majesty's loyal servants' and her ‘trooper Browns'
were a curlicue specialist's delight of purple inks on parchment packets. She was well paid, and bought a bolt of splendid black satin fabric to reward herself. She made it into a fortune-teller's dress.

To go deeper in Rankine's direction, tonight, was Martha's purpose in a set of cards she kept in a camphorwood box. She had dealt them over Rankine after their first scare, the day Stanton came into their camp after Rankine rode off with an armload of quart pots. The cards told her, then, they were safe with him, because Rankine showed in the cards particularly strong as the man with rays of goodness shining from his heart. (Devils were banished to shadows, wearing chains, when she drew cards over Stanton.)

Rankine sat by lamplight on a patterned rug, under the Josephs's loaded waggon, and was invited to concentrate, if he would, on questions of his own importance. The pack was tattered and worn. It was experienced in prediction down to its old-country stains and rips from Bohemia. It pictured skeins of silver creeks winding through meadows, glittering icy mountains, pewter cups overflowing with black wine, stars in the winter sky, bejewelled caskets, flocks of long-necked geese, ships in full sail, fire streaming back from a woman's hair. The ace of spades was a soldier dancing, the king of diamonds a rabbi, the queen of clubs a blackamoor, the jack of hearts was ringleted twins, a boy and a girl. Each numbered card from ten down was a contrasted picture of life.

 

That day was the longest day of the year. Twilight lingered.

Meg, missing Rankine's attentions with a twisty pain in her heart, went along walking with old Mother Hauser to a garden plot on the western road.

She asked after a man named Cahill, who lived in the back, in a small hut with a path well trodden to the door. Cahill was very quiet about his vocation. He preferred being visited at night. Having been transported to Botany Bay under guise of being plain Kevin Cahill, poacher, he was below the authorities' notice as a priest (though not as a bond convict gardener). If you were raised in the faith, as Meg was by her mother, you needed such a man from Ireland; you confessed your sins to him and were given absolution, and if it was the blessed sacrament of marriage you craved, you were prepared in it by him, and made holy up to and surpassing the expectations of your husband to be.

‘Must he be a Catholic, though?' she said to the priest.

‘It's best he is, though in this country there's a lot of pious wishing to be done, and few rewards in that direction. Put it this way. There's nothing doing unless he loves and respects your religion near close as he does love you. Does he love you, Meg?'

Cahill seemed to think she could judge on this, so highly did he regard her among abandoned women.

‘I believe he does. Better than any man ever.'

‘Can he be trusted with my calling?'

‘Entirely.'

‘Bring him over to see me, then.'

 

Meantime under the Josephs's waggon there came the rather wily suggestion from Martha that Rankine examine his cards in light of the question he was resisting. ‘I don't have a question. It's she who's giving me trouble,' said Rankine, without too much grace.

Martha fanned the pack before Rankine's crossed legs.

‘Pick one out.'

‘I don't have a question.'

‘Say if you did.'

It seemed, then, that he did. It was there in the vexed annoyance of his expression. Remaining silent, he hesitated, then turned up a card. It was a goose girl catching a golden ring. Sceptically pensive, Rankine twisted the card between his fingers before letting it fall.

‘What is she doing, captain?'

‘It's a piece of nonsense. A goose girl chasing a hoopstick,' he said, putting the card face up in front of him, and turning the next card over. ‘Who is this, then — a woodcutter?'

‘Yes. But what's that coming to him through the clouds?'

‘Another hoopstick again.'

‘You are the stubbornest man.'

‘Let me try for a third,' said Rankine, warming to a thought and turning up a card, narrowing his eyes to see better in the dusk. ‘Thought so — that confounded hoopstick again, what does it want of me? — with a waterspout coming up through the middle and a smaller waterspout on the left and three more waterspouts on the right.'

‘Are you convinced?' said Martha. ‘Mightn't you need an heye-glass to see?'

Her waving a hand in front of him and leering provocatively hinted that nothing was quite how it looked. Rankine snapped to attention.

‘Oh, it's a hand,' he said. ‘A woman's hand. Wearing a ring.'

‘Hurrah.'

 

Martha was friendly with Meg Inchcape in Parramatta. Rankine knew that, but was unaware — not understanding women as much
as he thought — that she knew of their trouble, understood it better than he did, and was able to see in a splendid love what wasn't right, but how it was triumphantly fixed by a lucky draw.

Of course, true luck was in a person's playing odds with confidence — otherwise there might be a rule, that you could not make your own luck from shreds and tatters.

Martha fanned the gilded deck, and Rankine more seriously continued his choice of cards, laying them out in front of him, face down. There was no more talk of hoopsticks. Turning the cards over, he drew the seven of hearts, a turreted castle; the four of diamonds, a carriage; the nine of clubs, a bouquet. Each time the circlet of rough twigs appeared he was barely able to understand how he'd missed seeing it before — a ring of gold inside the outer covering. In truth, there was no outside covering: because what he'd taken for twigs bound in a circle of willow wands were brush-strokes of gold paint worn through on the burnishing of symbolical gold rings.

It so happened that Joe had a gold ring, in a kidskin bag of jewels. It was on the market at a fair price, with only a little haggling involved.

 

And that was how, in a dusty glade of trees, next night of the full moon (which was as soon as the following Sunday) Tom Rankine and Meg Inchcape were married.

The ceremony took place a few miles from the river, out under trees, where Joe stopped their waggon. Those who attended were advised to leave the main tracks and follow a set of deep gouged ruts where a rag was tied to a bush, then to follow a lighter impression of tracks through dry grass. ‘Be there by nightfall,' was the
word. ‘
Come
,' was sent to Warren, but was a message equivocally mangled en route; anyway, he did not come. As many of Meg's friends from Parramatta came as could find their way, which was a good number, but from among Rankine's fellow officers there came not one.

Meg had nothing more beautiful to wear than Martha's gypsy woman's costume worn for fortune-telling. Tightened at the waist, where Meg was slenderer, lowered in the hem, where she was taller, it accomplished on her a ravishing sweep of black satin, its dark folds shimmering blue as a cock bowerbird's plumage in naked lights. The dress had an orange silk embroidered collar and cuffs, in a pattern of flower-de-luces. A trader's treasure box was rifled to find jewels and perfumes. Over her long combed hair, which fell in a ripple to her waist, Meg wore a black lace mantilla saved by Rankine — he did not know what for, until he took it out for his wedding day — from a box of mementos of Spain. Her face was pale and serious when she caught Rankine's gaze. She was the paleness of bleached dry leaves in the dry grass.

Storm clouds travelled along the western horizon. They pounded the rocky ramparts beyond the biggest river. Sheets of rumbling white lightning played behind the tallest trees. The priest, a bony man with large knotted fingers, arrived on dark and hurried them into a gathering. Mick Tornley lit two bonfires, one either side of the clearing. It was Mother Hauser gave Meg away. Rankine heard Meg and a dozen others obediently chanting Latin, saw them crossing themselves as the priest scuttled between them fingering wafers onto their poor tongues. Then the priest called to Rankine, and whispered his questions: did he love Meg's Church; would he never stand in its way?

‘As I do love her,' said Rankine.

‘You are bold, impartial, regardful, allegiant, and known as a friend,' said the priest, making a sign. Joe Josephs wrenched his head aside on seeing that sign.

Before Rankine knew, Meg was given as his wife, and he was taken as her husband — and they could hardly believe it, the fountaining of joy, the renewal of hope, the corrective of disruption. They could not remember what the troubled questions were between them. They were all gone away. Rankine was the proudest glad fool in Christendom — Meg the conqueror of his life. The lack of civil papers in their form of marriage made no difference to their pledges. Papers would be obtained in time: Rankine wanted to see the governor's face when he told him. A washerwoman taken as bride. Do not just stand there gaping. Pray sign the declaration.

Placing the chamfered gold ring on Meg's finger, Rankine lifted his eyes to Meg's — her hazel eyes almost reluctantly lifted to his. Overhead the moonlit sky was glassy clear; Meg's face was lit by intermittent strokes of lightning. Rankine's parched hungry eyes were on fire gazing at her.

All bowed their heads when the convict priest said so, raised their heads when he said so, and cried into their blessed handkerchiefs as he gave the benediction.

Afterwards, Leah Josephs served sweet plumcakes, Joe served rum from a cask, Arthur Josephs played his violin and Father Cahill tipsily recited a ballad, which nobody understood, except that in some lines he looked at Rankine in a measured, knowing way, and struck a hand to his knee, with a rhythmic crack. Mother Hauser took Mick Tornley by the arm and they danced until both fell over. The drinking, dancing, and toast making were accelerated because of the coming storm. A rush of wind came through the tops of the trees, then died away.

Before too long Rankine went around these friends saying good night and then he came to Meg. Taking her by the waist he lifted her onto his horse. She was a dreamer in a dream of contentment. Climbing up behind her, he held her around the waist and everyone gathered in and farewelled them.

Trees formed an archway of trunks and branches. Moonlight slipped bars of shadow across their backs as the mare stepped through bars of shadow in front of them. There was not far to go. Meg tipped back her head while Rankine kissed the fledged hairs of her neck. Coming up behind them were piled silvered towers of cloud threatening the moon. They rode towards a dim light coming low through the trees. As they grew closer to that light Meg made guesses of what it was. There was the fuzzy glow of lamps and the shadowy outline, enlarged, of a three-legged stool. Somehow it seemed the moon had broken off part of itself and crashed through the trees until it took on a shape of a house and a room. It had glowing walls with lanterns lit inside.

‘Under the porch with you,' said Rankine to his mare. He got down first. As he set Meg down, she slipped through his arms like a ribbon of moonlight. Rankine hobbled the mare. He turned back to see Meg with the palms of her hands brushing the canvas walls. She was quite absorbed in the motion. He could have stood there watching her for an age, but the sound of the canvas on the bare skin of her palms was the whisper of sand sifting through an hourglass. A drumming whisper of touch. Love a connection of moonlight condensing hope down through thin walls. After tonight Rankine was ready to throw the tent away and told Meg so. ‘You mustn't, ever,' she said. This made him smile, and he did remember their differences. They stood awkwardly at the threshold until Rankine remembered his duty and carried her over the log that
made the front step. (Rankine was not to tell Meg it was a bastard to rig up. He was never to complain about it. It had taken two days. There were the boards needed to make a portion of floor, newly sawn gum wood, sticky scented yellow boxwood planks — and then ask him how the bedding required all the plucked widgeon feathers from a dozen miles around Parramatta, and three layers of rare silk. Not to mention the pillows. The time Mother Hauser spent scrounging them. The time Martha spent embroidering them — all for this night of storm.)

A rattle of heavy raindrops went over the roof. There was the smell of damp dust before rain, the clatter of twigs, the pungent oil of gum leaves released by stormy dampness. Rankine steered Meg into the side division forming the bedroom. The walls were guyed taut, timber and rope braced. Meg sat on a stool while Rankine checked the rigging. The legs of the rough bush stool had scabs of bark on them. When Rankine came back he knelt on the floor and unlaced Meg's boots. Undoing his shirt he placed the bare sole of her foot against his heart. Their eyes met, Meg laughed and pushed him away. But when Rankine stood, Meg turned mutely accepting, as he undid the hooks at the back of her dress, wrenching where they resisted. His fingers were fat from wanting, his cheeks and his lung passages congested with drawn blood. He pressed hard against her, feeling for her givingness. ‘Tom,' she chided, lest he rip the precious material. Satin hung loosely from her shoulders. She guided his hands. He tugged the material from the waist, leaving it slumped at her feet. Then she was ivory lit, resplendent in every curve and hollow turning in his arms. He drew her back against him and stroked her belly. She sidled around, accepting, waiting, breathing. The closeness of her body gusted with heat and pungent Eastern perfumes sampled from Martha Josephs's jars and pots.
The moment was upon them, it was Rankine's choice how the moment was played. Her fingertips traced an electric pattern on his skin. He dropped his arms slack, as if he was already done, while his arousal said otherwise. Meg stepped clear of the dress, collecting it in folds. It was her first act of housekeeping under their roof. She took the mantilla and drew it across the foot of the bed. Quite openly, then, to his gaze, she scrambled across the bedclothes and turned offering herself to him, lying back on the downy bedroll. Rankine doused the lanterns. ‘Tom,' she called to him. Racing cloud-shadows whited moonlight inside the tent and darkened it by turns. Lightning sizzled, cracked, exploded fairly close, may be a tree went up, dazzling the eyes but they had the lightning rod. It was barbed over the cap of the tent house. Only a part of Rankine's awareness checked the progress of the storm. The other storm was in their lovemaking.