Thomas Keneally - A River Town

Thinking of where Old Burke came from at the start, and so daring him to exercise the sort of pity Old Burke himself would once have welcomed, Tim said, “The smaller cockies always say they duff cattle to feed their families.”

Old Burke groaned. “They duff cattle to cosset their habits and buy liquor.”

Gales of woman-laughter from the kitchen.

“Listen to them,” murmured Old Burke. “This is very good for Molly and Ellen.”

“You should take them to Sydney next summer,” Tim suggested for mischief’s sake. “Cooler than here. And that’s where the celebrations will be.”

According to all the papers, Sir William Lyne, who’d once opposed the Federation of the Australian states, had now decided it represented the future, and he was full of suggestions and edicts to do with the coming Commonwealth of Australia. He had urged that Tumbarumba should be considered for the national capital! (He must need votes in Tumbarumba.) And his decision was that the chief Federation celebrations should be in Sydney. A nice arrangement for the big town and its businesses. From this enormous state almost too large to be imagined, encompassed, travelled, old Sir William wanted everyone with the rail or boat fare, with a reliable string of horses, to come all that way and so behold the founding of the Federation he had so determinedly fought.

“I wouldn’t grace the event, Tim,” said Old Burke. “Humans bloody astound me. Change for change’s sake. And Sir William Lyne, who used to be a decent feller and against the Federal idea… now in consort with the Sydney Jews and pub-keepers. Trying to conscript people to a festival! Just to watch some hopeless, chinless, English bugger in a cocked hat saying I declare … And can you imagine the bloody footpads and the mashers and the razor gangs everywhere, running round in derby hats. I say, no bloody thanks, Sir William.” Still more pipe-work. “I voted against Federation. You realise we’ll need to have bloody taxes spent on keeping hopeless Tasmania afloat. Ever been to Tasmania, Tim? Awful bloody hole! Full of tattooed criminals. And the weather frightful. Like bloody Donegal with gum trees.”

Tim was pleased with the rise he’d got from Old Burke. Now he kept his voice soft so that he could cause greater annoyance still. Something about Old Burke set him off.

“I think there is a vision in it all, you know. I think there is something of the future to it too. A Federal Australia.”

“Sentimentality,” Old Burke grunted. “This is nothing about Australia. This is all to do with Britain, Tim. They would have us raise a Federal army. And where would that army fight? Like the Irish, like the Scots, like the poor, bloody niggers of India and Africa, this army would die for British enterprises. Read the Freeman’s Journal on this. No, I won’t go to Sydney to honour that kind of arrangement. Not at Billy Lyne’s word. He can go to the whores and lawyers in Phillip Street and order them around! Not me!”

Tim said, “I weighed it up but voted in favour. Do you know why? For the sake of my children.”

“It’s a keen mind that can see a connection between the matter of Federation and his children.”

“I wanted Johnny and Annie, if they chose, to live in South Australia or Western Australia on the same terms as the locals.”

“Why would you want your children to live in West Australia? It’s a desert shore of totally no value.”

“We can’t tell the future.”

“That’s the very cause why I voted no. No , the first time, and still no the second. You’re not telling me you voted yes the first referendum as well as the second?”

“After serious thought,” said Tim.

The truth was that there was something which excited him in the idea of the unity of such immense spaces of earth.

“Well, Tim, I gave you credit for a more sensible fellow.”

“When you have men like Barton in favour,” Tim argued, “and when a feller like George Reid comes around.”

“Puppets,” said Burke. “Look how Barton switched over from Free Trade to Protection once the Jews and the British spoke. And Yes-No Reid. Yes, I want Federation! one day, No, I oppose it! the next. Besides, he’s a lunatic for the women and riddled with social disease.”

Tim smiled. “But has he duffed anyone’s cattle?”

Old Burke took it well. “All jokes aside, I can see a Federal tyranny behind this whole move, and I can see lots of blood in the end. The Americans had their grand bloody federation, and look what blood was spilt at Gettysburg!”

But the huge spaces still sang in Tim’s mind.

The women came in whispering, tamping their laughter down their throats with their pleasing, splayed fingers. Plump Kenna fingers in the case of Kitty and Molly. How these Burke women must run rings around Old Burke’s simple and fixed ideas.

In the residue of the teaparty, for some reason, Kitty kept pressing Annie and Johnny—whenever you could get the latter little bugger in from the paddock out the back—on Ellen Burke, and they all took to each other. Annie ending by sitting on Ellen Burke’s knee. To Tim it all seemed to have a purpose not yet revealed.

Then Tim minded the store while in the dusk Kitty and the children walked the Burkes down Belgrave Street to the Commercial. Good to see Old Burke go, taking the assumptions that went with all his acreage back with him to the Commercial. In the Macleay’s lavender dusk, Tim could see Johnny doing cartwheels for the Burke women in Smith Street’s reddish dust. It was his way of communicating with people.

Kitty and Ellen leaning together, he noticed. What conspiracy?

A bit of swank catching the Terara to Toorooka. Because you could ride by cart there easily cross-country. Even Tim could see the limits of that, though. Going on the river itself, in numbers, was appropriate to Marrieds versus Singles cricket match. A more thorough relief too from amounts owed, spirits unappeased, coppers offended. A day of undistinguished enjoyment in a paddock upriver awaited all passengers.

After an early Mass though. The tales of childhood, after all, were salted with stories of the faithful who missed Mass once for a river excursion, and drowned with their omission screaming to Heaven.

Tim at the presbytery early to renew yet again and for another last time the five bob offering. The secret, relentless intention. “They prefer the company of humans,” Missy still insisted in his dreams. Since he kept delaying writing to the Commissioner of Police (signed “Concerned, Kempsey”) and doubted it might do much good anyhow, he was reduced to more ancient magics at five bob a pop.

The boarding school pupils left the church in two long lines, Lucy at the back, just in front of Imelda and the other nuns. Keeping the heretics close to the sisters. No rosary in Lucy’s hands, no missal. Outside, Tim extracted her from the shadow of Mother Imelda, took her to Kitty and the others in the dray and rode home with her. There, full of an unusual exhilaration and sense of the plenteousness of the world, he took Pee Dee out of his traces and let him loose in his paddock—the horse wouldn’t have been happy with a day spent standing round at Central wharf with a chaff bag round his neck. He would have done his best to get loose and kick buggery out of the buckboards.

And now a sweet walk to the Terara , Kitty on one arm, and a picnic in hand, “Carry me,” aristocratic Annie saying. Tim had bought canvas sandshoes for himself and Johnny, but before they reached the gangplank, bloody Johnny had them off and hung by the laces around his neck. If Tim and Kitty had been born here, the boy still couldn’t have turned out a more thorough colonial urchin.