Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair

‘A wormy-lookin’ lot,’ their owner grumbled. ‘Need a good drenchin’. Drench ’em, Prowse.’

Though the manager may have felt his employer was intent this morning on thinking up jobs to impress a newcomer, he agreed that the sheep looked wormy and ought to be drenched; wasn’t it his mission in life to tell Mr Lushington what he wanted to hear?

The latter had lost interest in his sheep. He was leading his entourage in another direction, when Denny’s mongrel deerhounds put up a rabbit. They gave chase. The leader snapped. Between them they tore their squealing prey to bits, and devoured it down to the last inch of opalescent entrail and bloodied fur.

Mr Lushington had slowed down his chestnut until on a level with his jackeroo’s nag. ‘Bit boring for you,’ he said somewhat surprisingly, ‘until you learn what it’s all about.’ He dug with his whip-handle at the Blue Mule’s withers. ‘Perhaps you never will. Perhaps you aren’t for it.’

Eddie suspected Gregory Lushington was endowed with more perception than he realised, but mumbled back, ‘It’s what I’m here for,’ and was immediately depressed by the lack of logic in his remark.

The logic of those with whom he had been brought together was as simple and direct as the glimpses of illogic in the landscape around them were subtly diffused. But Mr Lushington’s next remark made it hard to decide where he, or indeed, anybody stood. Turning his full gaze on his new acquisition as he had not up till now, he told him, ‘In Sweden they boil a piece of fish skin in the coffee. It’s supposed to bring out the flavour.

‘And does it?’

‘Opinions vary,’ Mr Lushington said.

He continued staring full face at his protégé from behind the gold-framed spectacles with a solemnity the younger man could only return.

Till simultaneously each burst out laughing.

It was too much for the manager. He had lost control of his star puppets. He began to scowl. There was a smell of class in the air.

Greg Lushington had turned his back on the present. ‘Your dad used to come down here. Do a bit of fishin’. When we were younger …’ From his fixed stare and muted tone of voice, old Lushington was re-living it visually. ‘A good looker in those days. Still is — the Judge. And you’ve inherited the looks — if I may say so without turning a young man’s head.’

It was positively a courtship. The manager would have felt more disgusted if at that moment Captain and Cis had not put up another couple of rabbits, which took refuge in a nearby warren.

Returning to the present Mr Lushington grumbled, ‘Eaten out by rabbits. Dig ’em out, Prowse. That’s something for the winter months. Break Eddie’s back, I expect. But that’s the way to break ’em in.’ Again he dug his stockwhip at the Blue Mule’s smudged withers.

‘Yes, Mr Lushington,’ Prowse agreed. ‘We’ll get young Eddie on to that.’ At the same time he gripped his mare’s belly so hard with his spurs that the poor beast let out a fart and curvetted sideways.

Mr Lushington grinned.

‘Did you know my mother?’ Eddie asked in the absence of other inspiration.

‘Your mother? No.’

‘I thought you might have met her.’

‘No,’ he said very firmly. ‘Never.’

They rode a little.

‘My wife’s met her,’ he said, ‘I think. Yes, I’m pretty sure Marcia knows Eadie Twyborn.’ They rode some more. ‘There’s a lot of a woman’s life a man doesn’t know about. I mean,’ he hastened to add, ‘all those lunches — and afternoon teas — and the letters they write one another — and the telephone conversations. We wouldn’t want to know, would we?’

Eddie agreed because it was expected of him. Actually he would have liked to know some more about Marcia Lushington of the beige eyelids and fringe of monkey fur. But realised he must keep her separate from Greg. Perhaps later on he would crossquestion the manager.

Prowse was looking grimmer and grimmer. ‘Talking of lunches, Mr Lushington — what about a bite of tucker ourselves?’ he mentioned, and laughed.

The boss did not reject the suggestion, nor did he satisfy the man he employed by accepting it outright.

They had descended from the slopes and were riding amongst the white tussock and briar patches which fringed the river before the emerald lucerne stands took over farther down.

On reaching an overhang of sheltering rock Mr Lushington asked, ‘This suit you, Don?’

It was the first time Eddie had heard the boss call the manager by his first name. He wondered when you did and when you didn’t; perhaps it was allowed when you knocked off for lunch.

‘Fine, Mr Lushington. A pretty decent windbreak.’ Though he did not attempt to return the familiarity, Prowse had jumped down, and was rubbing his hands together with boyish and at the same time passionate informality.

Sliding off the willingly passive Blue Mule, it was Eddie Twyborn who felt old, stiff, and formal.

Mr Lushington dismounted with considerable professional dignity. On his feet he looked more than ever pear-shaped, even toadlike, without losing his aura of authority and wealth.

The stockmen flung into automatic action and in the Twentieth Century did the sort of thing that has always been expected of serfs: snapping twigs, kindling fire, filling quart-pots, setting these to boil. The democratic spirit of Australia prevailed only after congealed chops were produced from saddle-pouches and the quarts had boiled: men and boss sank their teeth into fatty chops, trying to outdo one another in a display of ugliness and appetite.

Mrs Tyrrell had supplied Eddie with chops, but he could not have joined in the tea ceremony if Greg Lushington had not eased his own blackened quart in the direction of his friend’s son.

Blinded by smoke and steam, scalded by the tea in which he sank his mouth, Eddie lowered his eyelids to convey his appreciation of a ritual.

Judging by his smile and the expression refracted by the spectacles, Mr Lushington was delighted, but Don Prowse swallowed what could have been a lump of gristle. He began to cough, and frown his orange frown.

‘Get you a quart, Ed — first trip to Woolambi.’

Towards the end of the meal he offered Eddie a sip from his. The tea was by then cooler, if not less bitter. He was able to take several gulps. The manager sat nursing his knees, looking along the river as though to dissociate himself from his own gesture.

‘Moth! Bloody moth!’ Denny the son of Jim began shouting, golloping, beating ineffectually with a torn-off gum-switch at a creature which had fluttered out from the lee of their rock shelter. ‘Make good bait if you can catch the bitches.’

‘Set down, Denny,’ his father advised.

Denny obeyed, though Captain and Cis continued snapping awhile at the air which had contained the departed moth.

Mr Lushington said, ‘That’s one of the bogong moths. There’s a season of the year when they gather in the mountains — a regular moth corroboree. The blacks used to go up, and feast on them, and grow fat.’

Their lips and cheeks glistening, the whites looked replete and drowsy, if not with moths, with mutton chops. Only Eddie Twyborn felt nauseated. To stave off his queasiness he almost broke silence disgracefully by returning to the subject of Marcia, but swallowed the impulse along with his sensation of nausea.

The party staggered up. They packed their tackle. Except for tooth-picking, the work day seemed over. Well, the evenings set in early at ‘Bogong’. The inky shadows were already gathering along the river flat and in the mountain clefts.

The party rode off in the direction of evening fires.

Rounding the shoulder of a hill where briars had taken over, Mr Lushington said, ‘Root out the briars, Prowse. That’s somethun else for the winter months. Get this boy to help yer. That’s what ’e’s here for. Experience.’