Thomas Keneally - A River Town

There was a note on the scrubbed kitchen table which said,

Every condolense will keep up milking til further arangements and final notice

Some shirts and underwear hanging from a string by the dead fire. They were Bert’s and the boy’s and a chemise of the girl’s. Let Mrs. Sutter, Bert’s near-wife, sort Bert’s stuff out. But the girl went over and took the chemise and folded it up and put it in a sugar bag which had till now lain on a chair. She took the bag into the other room, and he could see her through the open door putting other things in it. He noticed a picture of thin Bert and his pinched wife on the deal dresser at the end of the room. A wedding picture. Mrs. Rochester stood up to her wedding day wearing a hat, and the little hands she was to give Lucy were meekly folded in front of her. Blessed was she meek and hers was the kingdom of heaven these days, where, if what was taken as gospel had any value, she had got Bert back and was consoling him again.

It was nearly out of his mouth to tell Lucy to take the photo. He was close to saying, “While you’re here you’ll want to…” But then he knew he’d be ashamed to see it in her hands, the reproach of her departed parents. It could be collected at another time. At the time of the final notice kindly Jim Coleman spoke of. If from anyone, the notice would probably come from the British Australia and New Zealand Bank. They would want to sell for certain. Mrs. Sutter had already said she wouldn’t buy Bert’s hard little hillside. She needed something like a pub instead, to feed all her children.

Tim talked the child into leaving Hector’s clothes for collection by Mrs. Sutter. The woman should come here for the task—that much was owed to Bert.

He was pleased the girl was finished and they got out again and left Bert’s herds to the neighbour. She didn’t ask for the poddycalf. She knew that attachment was at an end. Chuckles belonged to the bank too.

They followed the route back to town they had taken the day before, past the accident scene again. It had been all cleared away, the horse taken, the wreckage removed, the blood sunk numbly into a wet earth. The next flood would find it there. Bert would rise with the water. “We saw a man out there walking on the flood. His face shining.” That sort of thing commonly reported both in North Cork and the Macleay…

At last around the corner into Belgrave Street, home of the living land of pubs and emporia, of Nance’s Chemist, of Philip Sheridan Solicitor, Joss Walker Tailor, Taylor’s Book Office, and Tibbett’s Ladies’ Wear. And modestly at the end, where Smith and Belgrave made a right-angle, in the blue and gold awning paint, his own store.

Crossing from the Chronicle office to the Commercial Hotel for purposes the whole town knew of was the Offhand, a little ferrety bloke with an ironic face and a frightful pallor. He wore a grey suit and a stained collar. A blueness marked his jowls. Editor-in-chief of the Macleay Chronicle . Employed by the owner Hinton to pursue definite editorial policies. They were free trade and the Federation of the Australian colonies. Offhand confessed to being a former parson of the Diocese of Southwark. He poked fun at those who were always writing from New South Wales to the Queen or the Archbishop of Canterbury, warning them that Papist symbols and rituals were creeping into the liturgy of the Church of England in New South Wales. He’d never married, at least not in New South Wales; though he had a friend. Poor fellow a dipsomaniac. A good, democratic Englishman though.

The democracy and irony endeared him to Tim, who reached now for the rim of his own hat to greet him.

“Whoa Tim!” cried the Offhand, and Tim reined Pee Dee in successfully in the middle of Belgrave Street. The Offhand caught up to him with a shuffling walk.

“Tim,” he said a second time.

He had traces of a jaunty kind of cockney accent.

“Just to say we are all in admiration of your bravery and compassion in re Rochester. One Mr. Bandy Habash has been in our office extolling your rescue, and your taking in one of the children. Is this young lady here one of Mr. Rochester’s?”

“This one is Lucy,” said Tim. He was not at ease. He’d felt threatened by the Offhand’s exorbitant praise. “Habash did a first class job, too. He brought peace to the horse with the trace in its poor bloody entrails.”

“Tuppence,” murmured Lucy.

“What?”

“Tuppence,” said Lucy. “Our horse Tuppence.”

“Yes.”

“Is young Lucy going to live at the store?” asked Offhand.

“I’m going to see the nuns,” said Tim.

“Then you’re a fine fellow,” said the Offhand. “Those nuns are expensive.”

Tim didn’t want to be called that just then. Going to the nuns was callousness in his book, not fineness.

The Offhand said, “Young Habash even told me that you beat his thoroughbred there…”

What did Habash want? Enough reflected glory to get him in the bloody Turf Club?

“His thoroughbred was knackered. Too much buggerising around in Smith Street…”

“And you then carried the deceased on your own horse all the way to the Macleay District Hospital.”

“Ditto,” said Tim, almost to himself. “His horse was knackered, for dear God’s sake.”

The Offhand smiled and rubbed his jaw in a way which bespoke relentless thirst.

“Mr. Malcolm of the Royal Humane Society is sufficiently impressed,” he said. “Mr. Habash has been to see him too.”

“My God,” said Tim.

The Offhand reached out and patted Pee Dee’s haunches as if the conversation were now nearly at its end.

“If you want your valour or compassion cut back in any way, you’ve spoken to me too late, Tim. The tale as relayed by Habash and by Sister Raymond at the hospital is already set in print.”

“Then why in God’s name didn’t you consult me?”

The Offhand laughed. “The gallant Hibernian speaks. Dislike of public praise is the mark of true heroes, Tim.”

“Any news though of that girl?” asked Tim, since that was about the only news that could matter. He had felt Missy pressing him, insisting through all his helpless dreams.

“A bad thing to have lying around,” agreed Offhand. He wasn’t anguished, of course. Why should he be? All the bereavements of the world washed up through the cable laid under seas and over mountains and ended up grounded in the Chronicle ’s pages. “Meanwhile I’m off for my morning tea.”

The Offhand started on his way. That was the trouble with him: he was too quirky. People made more of his contrariness as a columnist than they did of his opinions.

On top of that he had a three weeks overdue account at T. Shea—General Store. So he was lucky he hadn’t met Kitty.

Dumpling Kitty in the store was seated in a chair behind the counter. Johnny was drawing with chalk on the blackbutt boards which made the floor.

“Holy Christ, woman. I’ve told you not to let the boy do his art in the middle of the store.”

Lucy Rochester looked at the boy, who raised his head and stared back blankly without malice and with keen interest. His son. He could turn out to be a great lop-eared Australian—few opinions, few ideas. If they weren’t careful with him.

“Mrs. Sutter wasn’t disposed towards the girl?” asked Kitty.

“She took the boy in.”

Tim was partly shamed to be talking like this in front of Lucy Rochester, who stood there with her leg injury still wrapped in the neutral mercy of white rag.

“Well, there’s no advantage to Mrs. Sutter any more,” asked Kitty fiercely, “is there?”

He hated her tightened mouth at such times, as right as she might be. He hated her to carry her face in those lines. When he had had their wedding picture taken by Josh Hendy and sent a copy each of two different poses to his parents, his father had written back to him. “To hand, the photos of your admirable wife and yourself, and all the arbiters of beauty and elegance here around proclaimed her to be as supreme in excellence as could scarcely be described…” The poor old fellow had never met her, of course. She’d come to Tim, in answer to his letter of proposal, direct from Red Kenna’s hearth, and had never got round to visiting Newmarket during their courtship.