Thomas Keneally - A River Town

“And they don’t make you say the Hail Mary.”

“Only if I want.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. He could feel her tiny bones there.

“So no one wishes you any harm. Don’t try to drown my son.”

“No,” she said. “But he does it on his own too.”

“I can scare him out of it. But don’t you betray me, Lucy.”

“No,” she said. She still went on looking west. Towards the smokier reaches of the Macleay.

In the centre of the mown sward, Wooderson and Curnow were tossing for the right to bat first, while the last of the Singles were breasting the hill carrying a keg jovially between them. Players in white flannel pants, held up by striped ties worn as belts, were pacing out a twenty-two-yard pitch in the middle of the mown space and then hammering in the three stumps and setting the bails atop them. This scene gave Tim a sense of event, and for the first time it struck him intimately that he would have within an hour or so to face some ferocious young bowler, defend his wicket and try to score runs.

“Marrieds are batting,” cried Wooderson, strolling back towards the shade where Kitty and Mrs. Malcolm sat, though not exactly together. With them, all the docile children, including the temporarily docile Lucy and Johnny. Two tall young dairy farmers, each with a pad on his left leg and bat in hand, were stroking at imaginary balls. The Marrieds’ openers, blocking, sweeping, pushing away. Were these two boys really old enough to be married? Men were leaning over the scorer’s chair, wanting to see where Wooderson had put them in the batting order. Tim sauntered across. Someone said, “You’re fourth wicket down, Tim. Give your clothes time to dry out. Unless all the other buggers get ducks.”

Everyone, the women too, concentrated on the tall, dark-haired young Aldavilla farmer who would open the bowling for the Singles. He stood near the stumps at the northern end of the paddock, swinging his giant arm in its big shoulder. You could see the machinery of all this shoulder-exercise working under his shirt. Curnow the bank clerk placed his fieldsmen wide of the wicket. In the spirit of the day, he expected lots of flaying of the ball, hoiks and hooks and spoonings-up. Slashes high and wide.

The first ball from the fast bowler wasn’t hit at all. It went through to the wicket-keeper who fumbled with his gloves and managed to stop it. But the next ball, the young Married farmer hit straight down the wicket past the bowler, and the runs began. The cricket match was thus initiated, and everyone relaxed and began to talk and by and large ignore the progress of the game. Such was the strange rite of cricket.

On his blanket, Tim sat like a child by Kitty’s chair. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you well, darling?” she asked.

“Perfectly so,” he assured her.

He wished the others would stop fussing, but he liked it in her, the plump hand on his shoulder by which she reassured herself of his substance.

She gave out a little stutter of laughter. “Can’t that little ruffian swim though?” She nodded towards Johnny. “An utter water rat. In his bath, I look between his toes for the webs, you know.”

She laughed. She’d really tickled herself with this image of her son as a water animal.

He was going to tell her to watch the bony little girl while he was batting, but the picture of Lucy paddling backwards, buoyed by air trapped in her pinafore, rose and was all at once too pitiable to be spoken about.

Kitty said, “Might as well get all the surprises over in one bundle. I’ve come to the conclusion—I’d like to go and meet Mamie in Sydney.”

For a time he felt ambushed, but then he said, “In your state?”

“I’m never stronger than when carrying,” she said. “I would be gone five days. Bring Mamie back with me on Burrawong , you see.”

“Dear Jesus,’ he murmured. “It’s a rat tub, that Burrawong. ” He could see Missy approaching her at the railing as, plump and defenceless, she faced both New Zealand and infinity. “You’d have to travel saloon, and we can’t afford it.”

She said dreamily, “Well, we can only afford to send the children of strangers to bloody old Imelda. And who says saloon ? Everyone sleeps on deck anyhow, this time of year.”

“Sleeping on deck is fine if you’re seventeen and there’s no storm. What if you’re seasick up in that fo’c’sle with the rats and the drunks?”

“Then I’ll know it’ll end in two and a half days. Two and a half days’ misery never hurt anyone.”

“Forty-five bob return in saloon.”

Kitty winked at him. “Oh, dear God, he’s suddenly got the gift to count money!”

“Think, Kitty. In violent weather you could miscarry.”

“Not this one! This one’s like Annie! Not like the water rat. This one sticks with Mama.”

There was a yell from the field. One of the batsmen had failed to connect cleanly, and the ball had risen lazily and was falling slowly towards the hand of the Singles fielder at square leg. There was some hope that he may have drunk too much from the keg, but no, he held the ball secure and raised it above his head. Mr. Malcolm, who was acting as umpire at the bowler’s end, dramatically signalled out .

The man in the straw hat who was doing the scoring cried out to the people who were sitting in the shade. “One wicket for fourteen. The rot has set in.”

Tim had seen few of the recent runs scored. His mind had been taken up with images of the Burrawong out on the Pacific, with over-bright days at sea, stormy nights.

“Ellen Burke will look to the children if you agree,” said Kitty. “It’s been arranged.”

“Jesus, I thought all that tittering the other day stood for something.”

“She’s staying on in town. Old Burke’s in a mood to afford that now he’s won the case. You get on well enough with Ellen Burke, don’t you now?”

“Will you be safe though? Those Walsh Bay wharves… Darling Harbour?”

“Dear Lord, observe the wonder! His concern for his little wife!”

She put her hand to his shoulder again. If they had not been in public, he would have kissed it for fear of losing it. Even though her gesture was purest irony.

“Dear God,” he said, “it looks like I can’t hammer you in place.”

Out in the field, another hopeful batsman was caught out swiping.

“Here we go,” said Wooderson, the incoming batsman. He would hold the bowling attack. But what am I doing here, an Irishman playing an English game in so far off a place, listening to my wife propose the Burrawong ?

He saw Ernie Malcolm surrender his umpiring job to a farmer. Ernie advanced towards the keg, rubbing his dry lips. A confession of a sizable thirst. Very soon, Ernie—glass of ale in hand—came and squatted near Tim and Kitty. The accountant hunched by the storekeeper! If only this were business. Ernie took a long pull on the savagely needed glass of beer. To look at his pruney face made Tim understand how hot it was out on the field.

“Tim,” said Ernie, panting. “I have to tell you that what I saw this morning confirms me in my opinion as much as what I heard before. As to your quality as a man. Your unquestioning response. Straight over the rail and into the river!”

“For Jesus’ sake, Ernie, it was my son in the river.”

“No hesitation, Tim.”

Tim said helplessly, “It should not be counted in with the other matter. And as you saw, I might as well have stayed on deck. The boy had already saved himself. Treading water easier than me.”

“I would anticipate,” said Ernie, dragging in another huge mouthful of ale and managing to get it down, “that you would say such a thing. When bravery is habitual, the hero cannot understand what other people see in it.”