Thomas Keneally - A River Town

Tim went to Kitty flapping his arms like a helpless bird.

“Fifteen quid,” he told her.

“All contributions welcome,” she said, grinning, reaching up and drawing him down towards her breasts, her paunch. Their child readying itself in secrecy. He noticed Johnny staring now, an unlikely, still gaze.

“He has not been himself,” said Kitty.

In the world again, he did not like the counter so much, did not like to stand there at the mercy of whatever person entered. It had in any case proved an unwise procedure in the past. Women to whom he made deliveries now were of course possessed by a fear that he had not been long enough in quarantine. They would call out from deep in the house, “Just wait, Mr. Shea. Wait in the yard. I shall leave the money on the back step, and then you can come up and collect it.” Was Ernie finding the same, and in his grief did he care? Did people look fearfully at pages he had audited and passed his finger down.

In the residence dining room one mid-afternoon, a conference was called around the table. Kitty sat close to him. He noticed how sure she was that the omens had lifted from him, how exultant to have him back, certified by Erson. He and Kitty sat together at the top of the table. At the side of the table Bandy and Mamie sat, Mamie with a languid hand on her fiancé’s forearm.

“Bandy’s been reading Irish history now,” said Mamie, and Bandy—not wanting to be showy with his knowledge—murmured, “The plantations of Ireland. Cromwell crying, ‘To Connaught or to Hell!’ ”

He was such a willing enthusiast for his new fidelity, his new systems of loves.

“We need to circumvent the hatred they have always had for us,” said Bandy like a Fenian. “Your wife and I, Tim, have devised an arrangement.”

“From here on, the accounts at the supply houses will be in Bandy’s name,” Kitty explained. “He’ll receive the bills and underwrite them, though we’ll pay them. I think it’s generous in a big way and that he’s a total white man.”

“Not in exact terms,” said Tim, and everyone laughed.

Kitty said, “See, we have that safety net. Bandy’s our long stop.”

Bandy beamed diagonally across the table at Tim. The services he had been threatening to offer Tim from the start, the system of generosity, was now in place, and Tim and Kitty such poor beggars they couldn’t refuse it all. And gratitude was the only right emotion. But Tim felt resentment. Even of Mamie, so recently landed and now with an edge on her sister.

“Ernie Malcolm promised me a reference,” he said, and the three of them, the two sisters and Bandy, looked at each other and pursed their lips at his gullibility.

“We are a family now,” said Kitty. “A wonderful thing to have the strength of it behind a person.”

She caressed Tim’s shoulder, an indulgent caress. As if she believed his quarantine, the daily fear of plague which had occupied him in the old barracks, had left him incapable for the time being.

Bandy and Mamie rode together to Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Father Bruggy in his golden cope, raising up the species of bread which masked the substance of Christ. In a gold monstrance for the adoration of the engaged couple.

Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for the sparing of Tim and the discovery of each other. Plus thanks for the conversion of the infidel. Mamie’s charm had done what the Crusaders couldn’t.

At these times, the children asleep, Kitty and Tim were left alone at the big sandsoaped table, the broad surface of their marriage.

“You don’t say much,” said Kitty. “What do you think of Bandy? As regards Mamie, is what I mean.”

“I think it could be recklessness. To have a Muslim father-in-law. And what about poor bloody Joe?”

“Oh, someone will get sick of seeing Joe stand around calf-eyed and marry him just for the chance of educating him. That’s how it happened with you.”

“A just point,” Tim said. He stood up to pour Kitty more tea. Tay , she called it, like a peasant. But that hadn’t stopped her understanding the way things went in New South Wales.

She asked, “What would you think if I told you Bandy’s already put up cash? That I’d borrowed the whole of our debt from Bandy? The little feller’s rolling in it, you know. A wealthy young man, not a drinker. No women to spend money on. No children. And seems to think we are his relatives.”

“I’d say I don’t want to depend on him.” In fact he felt the beginning of tears. Have I travelled so far to be someone’s tenant all over again?

Kitty shrugged, reached for his wrist, and put her head on its side. “It’s happened, I’m afraid. We signed an agreement letter. Something had to be arranged, darling. Something had to be managed! Be angry if you have to be.”

But he couldn’t manage anger. Anger was for those lucky buggers who had some power left. “Dear God! Was this before or after Mamie agreed to marry the little individual?”

“Fair play, Timmy! Do you think I’d sell my own sister? Only the bloody nobility do that sort of thing. No. She always thought he was Christmas. I mean, Tim, can you see Mamie lying still for being an item of sale?”

“I thought she was just pretending to like the hawker, see. Just to get at Joe.”

Kitty shook her head with such energy. “From the first time he came into the plague camp, down the river selling things. From that time, she thought he was Christmas.”

“So how much did you borrow, Kitty?”

“It was a full two hundred pounds.”

Again, it was too large a sum to remonstrate over. All he did was drink his tea with its rum lacing. He’d need a lot more rum. “Bloody mad,” he then said sombrely. Yet he felt both exhilarated too, as well as tethered. “We are bound to the little fellow for eternity.” He uttered it like a matter of fact. “But two hundred. Why did you need so much, for God’s sake?”

“Because. I have bought Elliott’s old store in East.”

He stood up without knowing it. East! There was joy in that idea. The river between him and his Central foolishness. The idea of the river sliced through him now, dividing him, putting all that was foul on the further bank.

“Jesus, is this really true?”

“We’ll primp the place up. Great deal more space than here. When the bridge opens… well, we’ll be on the pig’s back!”

All too much, too fast! In a rush, the tide ran out and left him stranded.

“Did you think I’d be dead?” he asked. “And you’d never have to account to me?”

She wouldn’t answer and her cheeks reddened, bringing forth a freckle or two. She rose from the table, waddled inside, came back with a large dossier of documents and slung them down in front of him. “I kept this for you, Tim. Read this and don’t insult me.”

He fingered the dossier. A marvel how much had been done in a period of quarantine. Her arts of business let free by his absence. There wasn’t any question about that.

“Though you’d be much better to wait till morning before addressing the details,” she advised him.

Tim wanted to know. He felt indeed too tired, even a little sore-headed for business.

“How much interest is the little Punjabi asking?”

“There is no interest. He says it is a crime to charge interest to members of his family. He wants repayment and a tenth part in the business, that’s all.”

In East, though, they would draw on the populations of Dock Flat and Pola Creek as well as on flasher residences on Rudder’s Hill. It was an idea! Again the waters commenced to run and he was excited in spite of himself.

Before they went to bed, he visited his sleeping son and daughter. Annie’s cheek, and the scar line on Johnny’s head. Johnny still slept like someone concentrating for a dive. He’d been chastened, said Kitty, and spoke in his sleep. Each day perhaps half his soul went down the cliff with Lucy’s.