Thomas Keneally - A River Town

Molly wiped at a sudden sweat on her upper lip. “He’s hung around all of us, you know,” she scoffed, wanting to draw blood. “Until he found someone simple-minded enough.”

There was jealousy here. It betrayed Molly into letting on to things she wouldn’t let on to in her normal wisdom. Jealousy of the hawker!

“Well, thank you,” Mamie said, flaming. “That’s a grand estimation of me…”

But she stopped there because Old Burke threw his pipe down on the plate before him.

“You bloody Kenna women have gone utterly astray in your bloody minds!” he yelled.

The outburst brought a little silence at first. But it was a rope thrown to the sisters. Molly decided to sit forward and grab it. “So my family are to take the blame for this tragedy? For spoiling your daughter?”

She blazed and it was not all rage at Old Burke. But he served as the first victim and deserved to as well, the old fool. Molly would punish him at length later as well. He’d be treated to the turned shoulder at night when she got back to Pee Dee.

Old Burke could foresee this and became more plaintive. “I just think there’s an air of conspiracy gets going when women are together.” He’d widened the accusation from just the Kenna girls to the whole gender. “It isn’t always for the best, you know.”

The three women frowned communally at him. Of course this was Mamie’s first meeting with Old Burke. Old Burke was Molly’s fortune, the rumour which had brought Mamie through the Atlantic, the Indian, the Southern Ocean and up the Pacific coast into the Macleay. She had given Old Burke and Molly as an excuse for her migration. It was what Red and Mrs. Kenna had used to soothe their aged tears. This dismal old cow-cocky!

Molly ignored him and spoke to her sisters. “She reckons she’ll raise the child herself in Sydney.”

“All bloody well,” said Old Burke. “But she’s bloody young to pass off as a widow!”

“We will give her every support,” said Molly.

“Goes without saying,” muttered Old Burke.

“She has made it totally clear to me… totally clear,” Molly asserted, “that she will not marry for this cause. Whoever it is… the fellow, she won’t say. And she has made it clear that she won’t marry.”

“She’s been to confession and the sacraments,” growled Old Burke, as if this had a bearing on her decision.

Molly nodded. “That was this morning. And we’re off on Burrawong tomorrow, she and I. By all accounts, it’s fumigated to the last square inch. We’ll have to walk the deck pretending we’re overtaken by an urge to see the Sydney autumn fashions.”

“It’s too bloody believable in her case,” said Old Burke. “Believable she would get an urge like that!”

Tim remembered how well despite their arguments the girl had minded his children. “Give her my warmest wishes,” he said. “And tell her if she should need anything…”

“Yes,” Kitty said, finishing his sentence. “She mustn’t hesitate.”

All the party looked at each other understandingly. They thought his quarantine had left him clumsy, put his social timing off.

“But can’t we go and see her, Molly?” Kitty asked. “Mamie and myself? Sure we could see her. She might be embarrassed by Tim. But Mamie and me…”

Molly said of course. Then she turned back to Mamie. “Sister, do you love this Habash?”

“What an idiot question! I could put the darling little fellow in my pocket and walk the earth’s highways with him.”

“And do you trust him?”

“He’s a bloody scamp and a charmer. But he has taken to instruction like Cardinal Newman!”

Molly looked aged, and shook her head.

“Then God bless you both!”

Everyone but Old Burke could read what all this was. She would not be able to flirt with Bandy when next he came to Pee Dee. The bush was narrowing in on her.

The visit to Ellen was arranged for that evening, and Molly and Old Burke got up to leave. As they went through the house and store towards Belgrave Street, Old Burke hung back a second.

“Fellows tell me you’ve been hugely political, Tim,” he commented with the usual above-human-folly frown.

“It’s nonsense,” Tim told him.

“No. Be careful. You don’t think you’re political, but you bloody are by nature. Keep clear of it all. None of it’s worth a toss. Land is the whole story.”

Blood came to Tim’s face. “Tell them , bugger it!” He pointed off indefinitely towards the powerful and complicated town. “Tell your flash friends to let me live.”

Old Burke stared dolefully. “I think your troubles have got to you, Tim. It might be the start of an education.”

The self-important old streak of misery went and joined Molly, who waited for him by the pavement.

“Thank God I don’t have to ask you for favours,” cried Tim after him.

Molly looked away, but Kitty laughed.

The visit to Ellen was made and Mamie and Kitty came back home to drink tea with a look of mutual placation, of the old sisterly unity, on their faces.

“She really won’t name the feller,” said Molly. “Says if she does Old Burke will force a marriage.”

Both sisters seemed disappointed by this. They wanted to know for knowing’s sake as well. They could have been savage to him in the street when he came to town.

Next morning, a drogher took the Burke women off with Captain Reid and the other passengers, up the river to where Burrawong had moored. Tim’s letter travelled by the same ship. Captain Reid had already announced in the Argus that Burrawong was fitted with new anti-rat hawsers of the kind which had been developed to combat the plague in Calcutta two years before. They had come to the North Coast Steamship Navigation Company too late for lovely Winnie.

A full week after his release from quarantine, Tim sent Bandy to the hospital with a basket of puddings and biscuits for Sister Raymond, and then himself resolutely took from the bookcase the envelope with the inscribed photograph of Miss Florence Meades playing Young Arthur, put it in his breast pocket, decided not to wear a tie, and walked down Smith Street past the curtained Southern Cross Billiard Rooms, the Greek cafe, the Good Templars’, and took to the stairwell—beside Holt’s Ladies’ Fashions—to Ernie Malcolm’s office.

At the head of the stairs, Miss Pollack, from the Rudder’s Hill Pollacks in East, still kept Ernie’s outer office.

He told her he wanted to see Ernie.

“Could I have your name, sir?” she asked in her bush-flash, piss-elegant manner. Her parents would be his future customers with any luck, but he was tired of dancing around people.

“Tim Shea,” said Tim. “I was in plague quarantine with Ernie and his wife.” Watch it or I’ll breathe on you! he implied.

And she was chastened by such a pronouncement, and went and spoke to Ernie, who then appeared haggard in his dove-grey suit at the door of his office, looked out and said, “Oh, yes, Tim. Could you hold hard a few moments?”

As Ernie spoke his eyes darted around towards unseen things in the office. His manner said, “Expect nothing.” Then he near-closed the door on his visitor.

Some minutes passed, but Tim would not take the seat Miss Pollack recommended to him. He wanted Ernie to get a sense of a restless presence in his outer office, and indeed Ernie seemed to, coming to the door at last and wearily murmuring, “Yes, Tim,” ushering him in then with a slack hand.

From Ernie’s office you got a view of the butter factory and the laneway leading to Burrawong ’s berth at Central wharf, left vacant—or else taken up by droghers—through the influence of plague. The walls of Ernie’s office were covered with bright certificates, some of them from Melbourne, from municipal councils there. An apostle of service all along Australia’s south-east coast.