Thomas Keneally - A River Town

He touched the boy’s head. “We are going to East,” he whispered.

He saw one day, while passing the creamery in Smith Street, Ernie Malcolm in a dove-grey suit, somehow apt for the season of mourning, passing down the pavement and entering the staircase to his offices. The Argus had carried a piece,

The gist was that Ernie had chosen to lose himself in his accounting.

So at last Ernie had been declared brave in his own right, and as senselessly as Tim had first been.

Tim had imagined unleashing the girl’s name the second after his release from the plague ward. But a Saturday and Sunday followed his release, and so he had secreted Winnie’s envelope with the photograph of boy-impersonating Missy in the London Illustrated News , the 1891 edition with the flood marks and the views of Uganda ceded to Britain by Germany in exchange for Heligoland. Having lived and been returned to the great turbulence of events, he was too stupefied for the first few days, but by late on the Sabbath he had begun practising a false hand on scraps of paper. Because he must write his own letter, as he saw it. Winnie was not here to rescue Missy. He was the living rescuer.

It began to strike him too that he needed to retain Missy’s picture with Winnie’s contrived handwriting on the back.

On Monday morning he wrote his letter on some Aberdeen Line notepaper he’d been keeping since his emigration voyage more than ten years back. The moist Macleay air had by now spotted its creaminess with little discs of brownish stain.

The letter said that the Commissioner of Police for New South Wales, situated in Sydney, who sought a name in the Mulroney case, should enquire from Tyler’s Theatrical Company, presently touring somewhere in the Australian colonies or perhaps in New Zealand. He said what the young performer’s name was, and added that she seemed to have a repute for playing the role of Young Arthur. He posted this communication in its staged hand at Central Post Office, together with Kitty’s renewal of subscription to The Messenger of the Sacred Heart , the Sheas’ credit being at least better with that divine organ of mercy than it was with Truscott and Lowe.

Missy’s name would be uttered at the Mulroneys’ trial, and the order of things thus restored. He had at last a sense that Missy was now a redeemed vacancy. His dreams were a jangled mess of things from the plague hospital, and he was content that they should be. Missy no longer entered. Her plain name had saved him, and he had taken her as far as could be expected of ordinary flesh. There was still a distance which she could perhaps take him. For that reason he had retained her photograph.

The affianced Mamie, walking over to Savage’s Emporium on some business for Kitty, ran into her sister from up the river, Mrs. Molly Burke. Molly had come to town with her husband and daughter, and without rushing to report to their relatives in the general store or to introduce Old Burke to the new immigrant, they had taken rooms at the Commercial. Though the two sisters embraced, Mamie later said there was something about the meeting which did not measure up. It did not resemble the previously imagined reunion of Mamie with the grandest and most successful Kenna.

That evening the Sheas, Mamie and the children were eating a normal meal when Old Burke and Molly did appear at the back door. Molly was chastened, embarrassed at having been seen to creep into town.

“We thought you were worried about Timmy and the plague,” Kitty remarked, winking. They had not heard about it though, and now were informed—chiefly by Kitty and Mamie. All Tim did was hold his hands up and say, “Clean bill of health.”

“Not here on pleasant business,” Old Burke growled through his clenched pipe. Sitting at table and humbly accepting tea, it didn’t seem as if he was going to be infallible on any subject at all tonight. They sat severely apart, Old Burke and the Molly he had so strenuously courted in the store. They were not a united camp. This fact at once paired, allied and reconciled Mamie and Molly. Molly’s hand reached out to Mamie’s wrist, wriggled it.

“So, my little sister,” said Molly. “Here!”

“No other place,” said Mamie. “And very glad I came.”

But the sisterly jollity still seemed forced and silences intervened. Some sorrow had overtaken Molly. She did not even comment on what she must surely by now know—that her sister was engaged to the hawker.

“Look, might as well say it,” Old Burke soon announced. “We are putting Molly and Ellen on the boat. That’s the situation. I expect it to go no further than your ears, but Ellen has conceived.”

He shook his head and wiped his eyes.

“Some lop-eared boundary rider from Comara,” he said.

“How long?” breathed Kitty. Tim wanted to know too. Could it have been when the girl was in his care? Was this too on his slate?

“Seems to’ve been some time in December last,” said Molly.

All the women exchanged glances. They knew the perils, the hair’s-breadth nature of things. Was Flo or Missy present in the room to gaze quietly down on the constant risks of womanhood revealed here?

Molly said, “Thank God for Croydon.”

Tim realised she meant a suburb of the great capital down the coast.

“That’s Saint Anthony’s Home for Fallen Girls at Croydon we’re taking her to,” Molly explained to her newcomer sister.

“So you’re going to Sydney?” asked Kitty. “With the plague raging there?”

“Well, you did,” Molly told her a little testily. “Would you have Ellen stay on at Pee Dee until she shows, and bring her to town then?”

“Where is she now?” asked Mamie.

“She is in her room at the Commercial,” said Old Burke. “On retreat. Reading a devotional book as she should have done earlier. Flirtatious, you see. She’s flirtatious by nature.”

He glanced at Molly. He blamed his young wife for some of it, for a lack of gravity.

“Well, Jesus,” Kitty protested, “women are . Need to be too. To get you bloody crowd going.”

Molly sat back in her chair. She looked very tired. “Ask us the questions you’ve got to ask us,” she told them. “Who’s the father, for example?”

“Well,” said Old Burke, supplying the answer for his wife to get it done with. “She won’t say. And I remarked to her, does this mean there is more than one blackguard? And instead of a clear answer, I get tears.”

Molly said, “I’m glad I was there at Pee Dee. Men can take a hectoring approach.”

“And a bloody man is behind this,” said Kitty, lightening the discussion with wise and emphatic shakes of the head. “There’s only one Virgin Birth. The story’s used up.”

Both the other women laughed guiltily at this blasphemy from Kitty. Old Burke looked at Kitty with amazement.

“She’s foolishly protecting her lover,” said Molly with a twisted mouth.

“Don’t dignify him with a word like lover, ” growled Old Burke. “He’s a brute and a bloody ram.”

As if Old Burke had never ridden high. But this was an awful and wilful scandal, Tim could see.

Old Burke said, “God, she flirts even with that Indian bastard, what’s his name? Haberdash? Molly herself’s no better.”

Mamie instantly flushed. No delays in the Kenna crowd showing their feelings. “I have news on that,” said Mamie. “I am engaged to Mr. Habash and don’t appreciate wordplay on his name, Mr. Burke.”

Molly lowered her fine eyes. She hadn’t been told after all. Old Burke paused in gouging away at his pipe.

“Mr. Habash is receiving instruction in the Faith,” Mamie added.