Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

Entering the homestead was like coming into harbour, and the sense of limitless space vanished, to be replaced by one of protection from the sleeping elements. Alf the Nark was in the kitchen of the “Government House”, and Mr Roberts had done his best to set the breakfast-table. The trucks arrived whilst they were eating and discussing the tin-kettling, and Alf the Nark was then in his own kitchen, grousing as was his habit.

An hour later the homestead was as still as the grave. Father Ryan and Sergeant Morris had gone, driven to Mount Lion by young Jeff. Mr Roberts sat at his desk in the office. Alf the Nark punched dough for the next batch of. bread, and everyone else was sound asleep.

Young Jeff pulled up before the police-station, adjoining which was the house occupied by Sergeant and Mrs Morris, with Father Ryan as their lodger. Mr Bumpus was standing in his door, and, seeing him, Sergeant Morris suggested a reviver. Father Ryan hesitated for the fraction of a second, and young Jeff seemed to understand why, for he said: “It will be all right, Father; I am driving the dad’s car.”

“Of course it will be all right, my son,” chuckled the little priest. “We will partake of some refreshment, ‘and so to bed’, as the immortal Pepys used to put it.”

Within Mr Bumpus’s private parlour they were served with a glass of bottled beer, and it was young Jeff who was the first to leave. Again at the car, he detained Father Ryan and handed him a cheque for five pounds.

“My fine, Father,” he said, smiling.

“Thanks, son! Remember, next time it will be ten pounds.”

The Passing of a Cook

ALF THE NARK aroused the men at five-thirty that evening by beating an iron bar on the enormous triangle outside the kitchen. The gleam in his black eyes indicated that he was in a towering rage.

Cooking on an Australian station does not induce placidity of mind. In the first place it is a seven-day-a-week job; in the second it very often happens that one or more of the men are late to meals having been delayed by sheep-work in a paddock; and in the third place the hours are long, and the cement or wooden floor of a kitchen is particularly hard on a cook’s feet.

On account of these drawbacks cooks are scarce, good cooks are priceless, and all cooks are martinets. A cook’s uncertain temper is, therefore, regarded with the indulgence given to lumbago, or gout, the sufferer receiving all consideration and sympathy.

When Alf the Nark started work in a kitchen his temperament was well-nigh angelic; but when the first month had passed-and Alf had a ten-pound cheque behind him-the small worries of life began increasingly to annoy him. At the expiration of three months a man accidentally spilling his pannikin of tea on the table, or not removing his eating utensils to the wash-up table when passing out, was quite sufficient to cause the speechless Alf to remove his apron with dramatic gestures, go roll his swag, and almost run to the office for his cheque.’

This indecent haste to quit a job invariably caused great inconvenience to his employer and to the men, who were compelled to cook their own food the best way they could until another cook was procured. That did not worry Alf the Nark unduly. He walked, if he could not get a lift, into Mount Lion, and made straight for Mr Bumpus’s hotel but before he became quite drunk was “bailed up” by Father Ryan and persuaded to hand to the jovial little priest five pounds. Left in peace then to drink his fill whilst the balance of his cheque lasted, Alf passed a gorgeous week or ten days, leaning against the bar for sixteen hours and intermittently sleeping on the hotel wood-heap for the remaining eight.

The culminating brawl that preceded his escorted stroll to the one-cell gaol at the rear of Sergeant Morris’s house was never remembered. When finally he regained consciousness his limbs trembled as with palsy, and his companions were reptiles and insects seen elsewhere only on the planet Mars.

Thencame his appearance in the small court where the storekeeper, who was a Justice of the Peace, regarded him with judicial sternness. The sergeant or one of his troopers gave evidence after Alf had, as usual, pleaded “not guilty”, and the J.P. sentenced him to seven days without the option of a fine, as he had been advised to do by the sergeant before the court day.

Again in the cell, dishevelled, unwashed, tormented by dreadful multi-coloured creatures, Alf was presently visited by Father Ryan bearing the orthodox prescription of a stiff whisky-and-soda. Since Alf had eaten nothing solid during the whole of the debauch, the restorative doses of alcohol were given on the strict understanding that the prisoner drank a bowl of Mrs Morris’s soup.

By the time Alf the Nark was due for release Father Ryan had obtained for him another job. The grand old man never had any difficulty in getting Alf the Nark a job, for Alf the Nark was a most excellent cook-for three months. When the day of release came, Father Ryan escorted him to one of the stores, and there paid out the cash for what clothes and necessaries the man required, thereafter to lead him to the hotel, buy him one drink, and from the hotel escort him to the mail-car, pay his fare, and stand by him talking in his merry way till the car pulled out.

Alf the Nark, with many such another, worshipped Father Ryan. It mattered little to any one of them what religion Father Ryan represented. They respected him for his cloth as they would any other minister, but they loved him-well, because he was Father Ryan.

And when he had seen them go out of the township the little priest sighed, entered his book-filled study, and made up his accounts. Every penny that he so jovially demanded in “fines” was accounted for, and every penny expended in “doctoring his patients” and fitting them out for the jobs he found for them was also entered up. At the end of every month the sergeant and the J.P. were invited to audit his accounts, and they invariably did so, for Father Ryan was insistent.

After beating his triangle calling the men to dinner, Alf the Nark began to cut up two roast legs of mutton. Usually the first man entered the kitchen-dining-room precisely ten seconds after the triangle was struck, but this day the men were in bed and asleep, and it was fully ten minutes before the first of them arrived, having had to wash and dress.

“Soup?” snarled Alf.

“Please,”came the sleepy answer.

“Soup?” snarled Alf to the next man, and so on until all were seated and occupied. Then: “I’ve ’ad enough of this. Ifyous think I’m going to be on deckorl the blasted day and ’angabout ’ere ’arfthe night waiting foryous to greaseyer ’air, you’re mistaken. There’syer tucker. Eat it or chuck it art. I’m finished.”

With a superb gesture he ripped off his white apron and threw it on the floor. One of the men impolitely laughed. Alf became speechless and danced on the apron, and, still speechless, rushed out to his room, where feverishly he rolled his few belongings in his blankets, and almost ran to the office. Half an hour later, with his cheque in his pocket, he set out on the eighteen-mile tramp to Mount Lion, visions of whisky-bottles drawing him on, memory of fits of trembling, of awful depression, of frightful creepy tormenting things obliterated.

That night the men washed up their own utensils and cleaned out the kitchen-dining-room, and when Bony had performed his share he sauntered down the winding empty creek until he came to a fallen tree. There he sat and gazed out over the great plain whilst the sun went down, and marvelled at the stupidity of men and the sinister influence of the bush which so greatly augments their stupidity.

Quite suddenly he remembered the two letters slyly given to him by Sergeant Morris, and these he took from a pocket and examined the superscriptions. That addressed to him in his wife’s handwriting he opened first, and read: