Thomas Keneally - A River Town

And Mrs. Sutter to be visited and Hector to be consoled this endless day!

He turned Pee Dee out of Elbow and into River Street. At Ernie’s place he was slow in tethering Pee Dee, at last putting his forehead against the horse’s neck.

“Well, your tucker depends on this, old feller.”

Pee Dee took no account of this peculiarly human frailty. His air was that of someone who had an inheritance in another place.

Tim chose the side path and went to the back of the house. There was no activity about the cookhouse, he noticed. No smoke from the chimney, no fragrance of breakfast-kindling wood. Were the Malcolms not up?

He knocked at the opened back door but Primrose did not come. Straining his head around the jamb, he saw the curtained place where Primrose slept. She was there. In the bed. Because her breathing could be heard.

“Oh, the big feller,” she sang. “With the money purse.”

Staring into the depths of the house, he was startled to see immobile Winnie regarding him narrowly from the door of the dining room.

“Oh,” he said. “Mrs. Malcolm.”

“Is it you again?” she asked, in a tone which implied she did not seem to be sure who it was. A sad deterioration. She too was falling down some slope. She wore an evening jacket and a long loose muslin dress. Long, long strands of hair had come unbraided. In the crook of her right arm, she carried her black cat.

“I wondered was Ernie in?”

“Ernie’s gone all night. A contretemps . His favourite servant, mind you, has a fever.”

She nodded towards the curtained space.

“I’ll go and see him at his office then.”

“No need. Come in, come in for God’s sake. Whatever you wanted. Drawing room. Drawing room.”

“I can’t stay long,” said Tim.

He followed her along the hallway into a vast drawing room. Three settees, lamps, a roll top desk, a bookcase. A distant table, with china stacked on it. A flash dinner set gleaming there.

“My husband brought home a gift,” said Winnie, “and as so often happens it triggered disputation. Perhaps if you see him when you go on to visit him, you could tell him I need him to come home again?”

A certain moisture appeared in her eyes and she flushed. The cat remained strangely quiet in the crook of her arm.

“Yes, I’ll do that for you,” said Tim. “Perhaps something you could do for me. People think I write these letters, that I’m political. I wondered could you speak to Ernie for me? I swear I wrote no letters.”

“And you will speak for me, Tim? Is that the bargain? Tennyson speaks for Daley? Daley speaks for Tennyson? ‘So I triumphed ere my passion, sweeping thro’ me, left me dry, Left me with a palseyed heart and left me with a jaundiced eye.’ That’s what Tennyson says.”

“It’s a nice set of china, as far as I can tell from this distance,” said Tim, abashed, and unable to quote a thing in this contest of rhymes. “I’m sure Ernie will be home soon, but I’ll tell him if I’m lucky enough to see him.”

“Home they brought her warrior dead,” said Winnie on a streak of verse,

“It’ll be all right,” said Tim.

He wanted to be off. He wanted to find Ernie, who would probably be irritable after a night spent in the Commercial, or perhaps on the floor of his office. But he must be spoken to direct.

“I’ve taken a vow now, Tim,” said Winnie Malcolm. “No more verse. No more verse. This is Kempsey after all. And Ernie is Ernie. The china from David Jones is the limit of grand things.”

“Is that cat well?”

She closed her eyes and her mouth slackened.

“It seems sick.”

She laughed and squeezed her teary eyes up and seemed to squeeze the poor cat as well. Six months ago he’d thought her the most abstractly beautiful woman on earth.

“I’ll ask him not to ruin you, Tim. You ask him not to ruin me in return.”

“If you’ll ask him calmly, he must take notice of you.”

“A kind of notice,” she said, beginning to shudder. “A kind of notice. Do you know my cat’s name? Its name is Electra.”

It seemed an overly classical name for a Macleay mouser.

She shook her head. “Ernie calls it Kitty. So your fat little wife and your brats, Mr. Shea! You’re worried for them?”

“Extremely so, Mrs. Malcolm. I have given people good credit and am given little credit myself.”

“I must stand by you and thank you, Tim, for all the poetry. There is something you can do for me. Would you kindly post this letter? I am not well enough to go out and do it myself.”

She gave him a thick and odd-sized envelope. Something stiff had been wadded in it. He knew it was un-gallant to read the address, so maintaining custody of the eyes he put it into the side pocket of his coat, his breast pocket being already occupied by his solemn declaration.

“Have no concern,” he said. “It’ll be attended to today.”

“The letter not to be mentioned to Ernie, though.”

Oh God, she was making a conspirator of him. And if Ernie discovered this… Well!

“All right,” he admitted. “Everything is in confidence between you and me. If I post this letter, I never posted it. All right? Is that our understanding?”

She moved the seemingly sick cat into the crook of her left elbow and hauled Tim to herself without warning, kissing him wetly and lushly on the lips. This was an experience nothing like what he had once envisaged and—with one side of his nature—expected.

Before he could disengage himself, he heard behind him someone enter and commence gasping. The sound of outrage? Bloody Ernie! he surmised.

But battling Mrs. Malcolm away, he saw it was Primrose emerged from the corridor. Looking at him from broiled eyes. “Oh the white feller,” she announced. “Fire on his bloody head!”

“Dear God, Winnie,” said Tim. “She is very sick.”

Primrose slid to the floor and lay on her side, wheezing. Something landed up from another realm.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh dear Jesus. This is not plague, is it?”

“Don’t be a ninny, Shea. It is purely influenza.”

“Does Ernie know?”

“She had nothing more than a cough at teatime yesterday.”

The Argus and the Chronicle were unanimous in the matter of sudden onset.

“I must fetch Dr. Erson.”

“Oh, you arrange my affairs? Yet want me to speak for you!”

“Let me find a rug for Primrose.”

“Yes. Make free of my house, Mr. Shea. Go on. Do whatever you like.”

Out through a wide door and across the lobby, he found a bedroom but kept custody of his eyes as if he were being observed by Ernie and would need to justify himself. If it were simple influenza, what a fool he would be! People could rave from a mixture of influenza and laudanum. People could see fire about the heads of others.

When he came back with the rug from the base of the Malcolm bed, he was pleased to see Winnie Malcolm seated. She had lain the cat, purring and gagging by turns, on the ground.

“Look,” said Tim. “It is shedding.” There was a trail of black hairs where the thing writhed.

Winnie laughed awfully. She drew herself up in a theatrical posture. “Then you must do something, Shea! Men of action and decision. ‘Bury the Great Duke, With an Empire’s Lamentation!’ Holy God in Heaven, what a laughable crew!”

“Wait here, Winnie. Sit still till I fetch Erson.”

“How did you know Erson’s our physician?” asked Winnie.

“I’m a prophet, Mrs. Malcolm.”

She shook her head at this silly claim.

He chose to rush out by the corridor, the dining room, pantry, back verandah. Hustling through the side garden with its rose trellises, he inspected his shirt inside his coat, fearful of some sudden infestation. He did not have time for a proper survey. He removed Pee Dee’s feed bag, climbed aboard, took the brake off and screamed, “Yoa!” at the horse while desperately shaking the reins. Pee Dee broke out into a grudging canter.