Thomas Keneally - A River Town

He sat down on the camp stool behind his residence and store. T. Shea—General Store. Situated in a corner. Where Belgrave Street ran up to the river and then turned at a right-angle to become the chief waterfront street, named after an earlier landholder called Smith. By looking down the lane beside his store and residence, he could take in the bend in the road, parts of bush-fashionable Smith, a section of nearly-as-fashionable Belgrave.

Some black people wandered past his line of sight. Danggadi was the name of the main tribe here. All barefooted, these visitors to town, the men in bits of suits, one coat bright yellow. Where were they going on such a day, with all the shops closed? Talkative ghosts in a town so solidly defined that most of its population could bugger off on a steamer and return to find everything still in place. No dahlias ripped out by the roots, no windows broken.

The river itself now. Another remaining inhabitant. It reached around a bend amongst willows people had planted here in the last half a century. Low yet still three times wider than old world rivers, and deep and richly green.

Take a glimpse too at the mountains in the west richly blue, the underside of a mallard’s wing. So that was it. He’d appreciated his bright surroundings, the unembarrassed light and the blue hills and the deep, navigable Macleay river olive with mud, and the quiescent punt at Central wharf, and then the huge pylons sunk in the water for a coming bridge between Central and East.

And now he could take a mouthful of the rum—ahh, the delicious too-muchness at the back of the throat, the shudder that out-shuddered fever—and then picked up the Argus . For though he respected the Chronicle , the Argus was very generous with its serial by A. A. Druitt, the Dickens of the end-of-century.

The Honourable Delia Hobham was the spirited girl who had made three previous appearances in the serial in the Argus throughout January. She came from somewhere in the West Country of England, since A. A. Druitt made a meal out of what the peasants and servants said to her. “Auw, Miss Delia, there bain’t been no bakin’ powder fur cook to gi’ the pantry a freshenin’ wi’.” A. A. Druitt’s Miss Hobham lived in Hobham Hall with her mother and father, and every day she rode out amongst the villagers and tenant farmers, who called down blessings on her father’s head. Silly buggers!

The father never seemed to turf any tenants off their land. That’s how you knew this was fiction. For the Allbrights at home, landowners of Newmarket in Duhallow, North Cork, took every chance to evict people for their own good and recommend them to emigrate to Massachusetts or Australia. But no one ever mentioned emigration from the Hobham estate. Too busy being grateful to bloody Squire Hobham. So the world was fine if you had a good squire and foul if you had a bad one. What about having none at all? This tale, however, was suitable old world pap to serve up in a place like Kempsey, New South Wales.

The male Danggadi blacks had been followed by a string of women now, and children. Gluey ears and blighted eyes on the young ones. Searching for a bloody carnival in a carnival-less town. From looking at them a man got the momentary, mad, missionary urge to live amongst their humpies and pass away with them. Everyone said they were passing. Poor buggers!

He watched them loping for a time down towards the butter factory near Central wharf.

Out in Belgrave Street—broad because surveyed more than seventy years past by a British army officer from Port Macquarie—the younger Habash brother rode past at a mad pace on a grey. He was of a family of licensed hawkers and herbalists. He’d taken advantage of the empty town to get involved in such riding in the two chief commercial thoroughfares. The bloody little brown-complexioned hawker, in a broad felt hat and black waistcoat and trousers, leaning forward in the saddle. Where were the Habashes from? Somewhere east of bloody Suez for a start. India maybe.

“Bloody slow down!” Tim cried, but not too loudly. Habash’s golden dust hung in the air, held up there by the day’s humidity.

“Jesus,” Tim asked the Honourable Delia, who sat there on the page of the Argus , “where’s the bloody Nuisance Inspector?”

On the Terara probably. Under the awnings. Within sight of Kitty who wore her gossamer veil let down over her pink little oval of a face. Annie his daughter sedate on the forehatch. Such a staid child all the time. Johnny of course wild as buggery at six and a half years, climbing things, threatening to hurl himself over the gunwales.

Holy Christ, that bugger Habash was galloping back down Belgrave Street now! You could see him fleet through the neck of the laneway between T. Shea—General Store and E. Coleman—Bootmaker. Thundering back into the dust he’d already made.

“Do you want me to knock you out of the bloody saddle?” Tim asked of the top branches of the peppertree.

Britain’s griefs in Africa filled the papers. From them the New South Wales Mounted Rifles, recently embarked for Natal, had not yet had time to deliver the mother nation. However… on the masthead page of the Argus , he noticed, flipping backwards and forwards between the sweet, ridiculous drama of the Honourable Delia Hobham and the pages full of harder intelligence, Mr. Baylor, Treasurer of the Patriotic Fund, raised the idea of a Macleay Valley lancer regiment being recruited to send off. To sort out Britain’s African affairs. The Australians would pull the fat out of the fire.

Tim reached out of his chair and picked up the Macleay Chronicle . Tim’s favourite the good old Offhand, editor and chief columnist. No one ever called him by his real name. Through his column he’d become Offhand to everyone. He’d have sent off one of the junior journalists to write of the Terara and would be drinking somewhere indoors today, somewhere dark and cool. Maybe with the skinny little widow, Mrs. Flitch, he visited in West.

There was the Offhand on page nine. “The factors of the British Army in India, on their visit to the Macleay Valley last August, could find from a total of one hundred Macleay horses offered for their perusal only five that were suitable for active service. It would seem that only the most rigorous and widespread breeding programme would produce enough mounts here to save Macleay Valley volunteers from the disgrace of being infantry.”

One in the eye for Mr. Baylor with his plans for a public meeting to raise a regiment. Bloody good for you, son!

Bloody hell, that Afghan or Punjabi hawker was flogging the grey back down Belgrave Street again. He’d been fined just six months back for thrashing some other poor piece of horsemeat down Kemp Street. Then fined again by the Macleay police magistrate for using raucous language with Mrs. Clair, standing on her front steps and accusing her of not paying for cloth he’d ordered especially.

In heavy air, Tim folded his papers and laid them on his camp stool. Somewhere on earth a wind was blowing, and somewhere sleet cutting the faces of men and women. But here it was hard to believe that. The Macleay air at mid-summer was gravid, a first class paperweight. Tim got up and walked past the gate behind which his own eccentric and leaden-footed horse, Pee Dee, stood grazing and ignoring him, and out into Belgrave Street. Down by Worthington’s butchery, the hawker was recklessly yanking the grey around for another assault on Kempsey’s stolid atmosphere. He was lightly whacking the poor beast’s sides, but with such a smile that you thought he must believe the horse was enjoying all this as much as he was.

Tim waited a while in the shade of his storefront. Only when Habash was well-launched did he step forward. Thinking in his dark way, Let the bugger run me down and see what the police magistrate makes of that!