Thomas Keneally - A River Town

“Get down from there!” he yelled, sounding predictable to himself and therefore negligible to the brats on the railing. Others were moving towards the children too, a couple of the young Singles team who made amused noises. It seemed to him that Lucy and Johnny jumped by common and wilful consent, but again without words. His son and Lucy were simply gone in an instant. The Singles cricketers screamed, “Children overboard!”

Kitty stood behind Tim gasping and crying out in terror. Tim knew that the playful Singles were no use to him, nor overdressed Ernie. A simple and dreadful thing to act. Rushing aft, he climbed the taffrail and launched himself, sandshoes first, into the turbulence behind Terara , where the children could be seen bobbing and apparently enjoying themselves.

He was no more than a social swimmer, he remembered on the way down. He’d have swum a few strokes at a beach in Capetown and another few in Ceylon. He’d swum sometimes in the creek at Crescent Head and, observing the style of Wooderson, in the river. Then during the great floods, small distances, down Belgrave Street, from the dinghy to a given rooftop say, from one hotel upstairs verandah to another, or to put a rope on an item of floating furniture. Assisting Wooderson who was the sublime, unbeatable swimmer. Now here he was going alone into the ferment of water behind Terara .

Before Tim’s white shoes broke the tumbled surface, he confusedly saw Johnny swimming free of the wake with short choppy strokes. But Lucy on her back, her pinafore blossoming, flapping casually at the water with her hands.

A shock to hit the river and go down into that dark, bubbling mess and get at once the tang of mud on your tongue and the pinching fullness of water in your nose. And so long under, yearning for the fall to cease, for the ascent to light. And who bloody said the ascent was to happen, who guaranteed he would rise? Was it physics or just occasional good luck that brought people up for a last look at a known world?

Keep your mouth shut, you silly bugger.

Dark water choked him. But he came up and while biting off his first breath found the recovered universe busy as blazes. Terara , more massive than he ever believed it to be, was turned abeam of him. He watched Jim Wooderson commence a lovely swallow dive from amidships. The captain shouting through a bullhorn. “All wait where you are! Help at hand! Help at hand!” Lifebuoys came arching through the air.

Johnny swam towards Tim as he stayed upright, pedalling in the water, dragging himself along, using his arms as oars. Johnny, bush humourist as he was, began imitating him. Or perhaps it was honest filial imitation. Who had time to tell?

“What are you at?” Tim asked the boy, and the boy actually scooped water up and pushed it towards Tim and had leisure to laugh.

There was a rope within grabbing distance and they both grabbed it. Aboard, he could see even from water level, a crewman and some of the cricketers took energetic hold, and someone shouted, “Willing Hands!” The slight speed of the boat combined with the vigour of the men on the rope meant that Tim and Johnny were hauled through the water more speedily than Tim would have liked. The river had settled though, and Tim could see that Jim Wooderson had meanwhile swum to the girl, who still gave every sign of enjoying her floating exercises.

“I’m going to give you something when we’re aboard!” Tim cried to his son. The captain was letting down a ladder, and the hauled rope brought Tim and Johnny to its base. Johnny leapt from the water and was up it, deft as something inhuman. As Tim pulled himself out of the river and up the rungs, leaving the water and becoming heavy, the full weight of his shock returned to him. He had to pause halfway up and then continue after deep breaths, but when he reached the top, a dozen hands pulled him over the steely rim of the ship, and two dozen others tried to. There was applause and whistles. “Don’t go hard on the boy, Tim!” people called.

In the water, Jim Wooderson was dragging the girl along with great brave strokes of his big, fast-bowler arms. No nonsense from Lucy. She was coming quietly. Tim turned and reached out to cuff Johnny’s ear and someone put a beer in his hand. Yes, he thought, delightful. He drank. Wonderful. Kitty was there to cuff and shake the boy anyhow. Then she clung to Tim and looked up at him. There was such terror in her little peasant pan of a face.

She said, “That bloody Lucy. What in the name of all holy is she about?”

“I will find out,” said Tim softly in her ear.

“Thank Christ I didn’t let her into the house!”

After drinking, he no longer had the breath to tell her, “That might be why she did it.”

On top of the bluff at Toorooka, some local cricketers had mown the grass and raised a bit of a tent. People had placed a chair solicitously for Mrs. Kitty Shea in the shade at the edge of the field. Fearful maybe that her shock might cause a premature birth. The children sat at her feet, Annie without having to be ordered to do it, Johnny and Lucy in their silt-stiff, drying picnic clothes. Under the severest orders of the entire company not to move.

“Of course, I’ll bloody play,” Tim had to keep reassuring the group. Wooderson, wrapped in a fresh shirt and someone’s huge towel, was already twirling the bat in his hand, playing strokes at phantom balls. Since he was an utter tower of a fellow, no one asked him was he fit to play.

Tim himself wore a jacket and trousers. His shirt was drying, laid out on the grass. He’d lost a sandshoe to the river. A fresh pair from Savage’s. Three and sixpence worth. He would have to field and bat barefoot.

He’d taken Lucy aside after they had landed at the bottom of the lane which led up to the cricket pitch. Young men, singing, carried the blanco-ed bag of cricket gear past them.

“Tell me why you’d try to drown my son?”

“No,” she said, looking calmly down the hill at the river. “No, I didn’t try it. He wanted to jump. I jumped with him.”

“No, you’re older, miss. What did you tell him to get him up on the rail? You say nothing to me. What did you tell him?”

“He went up there. I went up there too.”

“Him first?”

“Yes. It was being like the birds.”

“I don’t believe you, that he went up before you.”

“No,” she said. “Him first.”

There was a small flexing of the mouth and her eyes filled, but only a moistening. No bawling from flinty little Lucy.

“And you jumped? I saw that. You jumped exactly together. Why?”

“Men screamed at us. That’s why we jumped.”

God, men had screamed.

“Mother Imelda might hear of this.”

She said nothing.

“Tell me straight,” he asked, pursuing old suspicions. “Are you happy at the nuns?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think I killed your father? I didn’t kill your father, you know. I carried him to hospital. He had already gone. Do you understand?”

She looked straight back at him. No evasion in the eyes. She was the most astounding child, nor could she be reached.

“Thank you for bringing me the condensed milk,” she said, her eyes creasing against the light. “It’s lovely in the tea.”

“Well, any more fuss with water, and that’ll be the stony end of condensed milk. Will you for sweet Christ’s sake please tell me are you happy? Are you at peace?”

He lay at the centre of a universe of women who generally went less than satisfied. Particularly this one. Particularly Missy. The others, kindlier stars, smiled on him.

“I like it when you bring me chocolate too,” she said.

“And the nuns let you keep it?”

“Yes.”