Thomas Keneally - A River Town

Kitty sank back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling; a posture encouraged by her condition. “Tim is a sort of Doubting Thomas. But I tell you, Tim, the man’s main tonic is a grand pick-me-up.”

All eyes then on Bandy. Ellen Burke’s dwelling on him from the end of the table.

“Give us a scientific exposition,” called Joe, winking, and sipping again at his beer.

Bandy murmured, “Where to begin? The chief constituents of the body in Punjabi herbalism are the blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow, chyle, and semen. One element, when disordered, influences all the others through their connection.”

“Who taught you all this?” Tim asked.

“My father of course. In my homeland, there are a list of more than three hundred vegetables which can be used as cures. Some of those cannot be had here in the Macleay, though some can. We are able to get useful animal and herbal substances brought up also on the Burrawong from Sydney.”

“Any cure for plague?” called Joe. Desire and drink had made him mean.

“And then of course,” Bandy continued, “sometimes a mixture of the mineral and vegetable is required. Take the blood. We make a mixture of rhubarb and iron for our blood tonic.”

“Rhubarb and iron,” murmured Kitty.

“I feed blood tonic now and then to my own horses. For breathing problems I make up a herbal mixture to be burned beside the patient’s bed. This is moxa, which we are supplied by the Chinese herbalist of Dixon Street, and some Indian hemp, which grows wild in this valley and can be harvested by penknife. For the illnesses of women in pregnancy and for general liverishness, we use belladonna, which restores the fabric of women and is much appreciated. Mr. Nance the pharmacist, you will find, uses the same herb, the foxglove, as in Habash’s Heart Tonic.”

“A body of scholarship, Mr. Habash,” said Mamie, seemingly in awe. “A body of scholarship you carry in your head.”

Bandy gave just a margin of a smile but then swallowed it.

“It is true,” he said in a very low voice, which might have been actually beyond the hearing of Ellen Burke and Joe O’Neill, “that many people tell us that they are grateful for our remedies, more grateful than for some others they receive from chemists.”

“Sure, the chemists and doctors don’t know everything,” said Kitty.

Tim found himself treating Bandy’s exposition of his craft as a herbalist with greater tolerance now than he might have a month ago. He asked what other remedies. Bandy mentioned rhinoceros horn for older men, and ground quantities of gallstones from bulls mixed with cardamom and cinnamon. Arsenic was excellent for rheumatism and for the complexion.

Tim noticed Mamie had the hawker-cum-herbalist enchanted. The more substances he mentioned, the more his gaze turned to her.

Abruptly Ellen Burke stood up. All she could manage to say was, “Custard.” She grabbed the apron off the back of her chair and half-rushed, half-staggered out to the cookhouse.

“Oh yes,” said Mamie, rising after a moment. “I’ll help.”

Again, the amazing lack of novelty with which she moved, as if she’d grown up in this house. Her going left a silence.

Kitty whispered to Tim, “Go and see, Tim. Go on. Something’s up.”

Tim rose. Dear God, he was not as steady as he thought. Even on one leg.

“I’m just going out to lend a hand,” he told the other men.

Both Joe and Bandy bounded up. They did not want to see a lame man doing what they could.

“No, gentlemen,” said Kitty from her powerful, seated position. “You are guests.”

Outside, a light rain, softer than silk, slanted in under the verandah. He hobbled along under the covered way to the cookhouse where the fire was restrained.

From outside the cookhouse he could hear the women speaking, and a certain tightness in Ellen Burke’s voice.

“No, put it down. Let me do things, for God’s sake.”

“Would you prefer I didn’t help at all?” asked Mamie. She sounded half-amused.

“I’d prefer that you didn’t come in from nowhere, swing in on a steamer from some bloody damp heap of a place and upset friendships. That’s what I’d prefer.”

“Upset friendships. What do you mean?”

“Some things are already set up here. And you blunder in as if everything starts from your arrival. All earlier bets off! Well, that’s not the way you’ll get on here.”

Tim stepped further back into the shade of the verandah. He did not want to be discovered by them but also did not want to go.

“You’re teasing poor Mr. Habash,” said Ellen. “He’s a lonely soul, but you make him sit beside you. Only so that Joe O’Neill will pant all the more for you. Well Mr. Habash is more than something you can make use of, and he already has his friends. Don’t think of that though! Miss Importance from some shitty pigyard in Cork! Queening it in the bloody colonies, for dear God’s sweet sake!”

Tim waited through the silence in which Mamie’s temper—such to resemble Kitty’s—rose. “What a performance, miss,” Mamie ultimately said. “I’m not using Mr. O’Neill or Mr. Habash one way or another. Men use themselves and they always have and are happy to do so. Now, do you want me to help you carry in the pud or what do you want?”

But there was no sound of movement from within the cookhouse. It could be sensed that Ellen Burke was on the edge of tears or perhaps in them. She was dealing with an older, archer, and more stubborn woman.

“Your sister isn’t going to like it,” Ellen plaintively argued, “if you come in here interfering with old friendships.”

“Kitty? Kitty seems perfectly happy sitting there with her big stomach. Kitty’s troubles are over. Kitty is easy.”

“I don’t mean Kitty. Your other sister. Remember? My stepmother. Mrs. Molly Burke. A genuine lady.”

“Oh, Molly? Molly isn’t just like the rest of us. Always had the airs. All she was looking for was a chance to exercise them. And why would Molly be upset? You don’t mean to say she has a fancy for the little brown feller?”

This was fierce, close stuff, exactly like Kitty’s method of debate. Ellen could be heard frankly weeping. “We don’t want another bloody bitch in this country,” she cried. “We have a full supply already.”

Mamie turned softer now. “Stop blubbering and let me take that tray for you. Now come on, Ellen. Listen, do you love the little pagan? Is he your sweetie, is that what this is?”

There was no answer.

“Well, come on, tell a woman for sweet Christ’s sake!”

Ellen said, “You’ll marry Joe in the end, so all you’re doing is messing Bandy up!”

“It’s kind of you to make predictions, Miss Burke. I can tell you that Joe O’Neill can whistle. I don’t intend to be shackled to a mopey old bugger like him. I’d like a contest out of life! Come on, give me that bloody tray and dry up!”

“Wait,” Ellen Burke protested through her tears, “I have to put the plates on.”

With soft rain slanting down onto his shoulders, Tim began retreating up the verandah lest he be overtaken by partly reconciled women carrying pudding and custard and plates.

That night, when all his guests were asleep, worn out by good times or by anguish, as he lay beside Kitty, who was profoundly and noisily asleep, Missy again—and as was to be expected—stepped into the room from the sea. She wore a blazer, a man’s shirt and tie. She appeared to have theatrical purposes. You could tell that, since her cheeks were rouged. An overpowering sea, hurtful to the gaze, lay behind her.

Old Bruggy’s Masses hadn’t soothed away this restive spirit, who brought everything into play, the sea, his father, Bandy’s predictions, assertions and suggestions. Depending on him for her salvation and her substantiality, poor bitch. As Imelda had chosen him to supply groceries gratis , Missy had looked up through the fluids, seen him as the town’s co-operative spirit, the easy mark, the man who would go to proud and tormented trouble.