David Malouf - The Complete Stories

It was a fine clear day and there were two of them, alike but different; both pale and hopeless looking, thin-shouldered, unshaven, wear- ing shabby garments, but not at all similar in feature. They did not appear to be together. That is, they did not stand close, and there was nothing to suggest that they were in league or that the first had brought the other along or summoned him up. But there were two of them just the same, as if some process were involved. Tomorrow, she guessed, there would be four, and the next day sixteen; and at last — for there must be millions to be drawn on — so many that there would be no place on the lawn for them to stand, not even the smallest blade of grass. They would spill out into the street, and from there to the next street as well — there would be no room for cars to get through or park — and so it would go on till the suburb, and the city and a large part of the earth was covered. This was just the start.

She didn't feel at all threatened. There was nothing in either of these figures that suggested menace. They simply stood. But she thought she would refrain from telling Jack till he noticed it himself. Then they would do together what was required of them.

You've fallen on yer feet, son, you're in luck. This is the university ‘v hard knocks you've dropped into but I've taken a fancy to yer. I'll see to it the knocks aren't too solid.”

It was the foreman speaking, in a break on the boy's first day. The five of them had knocked off just at eleven and were sitting about on logs, or sprawled on the leaves of the clearing, having a smoke and drinking coppery tea.

The foreman himself had made the tea. Gerry had followed him about, watching carefully how he should trawl the billy through the scummy water so that what he drew was good and clear, how to make a fire, how the billy should hang, when to put in the tea and how much. The foreman was particular. From now on Gerry would make the tea. The foreman was confident he would make it well and that he would do all right at the rest of his work as well. The foreman was taking an interest.

He was a sandy, sad-eyed fellow of maybe forty, with a grey flannel vest instead of a shirt. Gerry felt immediately that he was a man to be trusted, though not an easy man to get along with, and guessed that it was his own newness that made him so ready on this occasion to talk. With the others he was reserved, even hostile. When they sat down to their tea he had set himself apart and then indicated, with a gesture of his tin mug, that Gerry should sit close by. Gerry observed, through the thin smoke of the fire, that the other fellows were narrowly watching, but with no more than tolerant amusement, as they licked their cigarette-papers and rolled them between thumb and finger. As if to say: "Ol’ Claude's found an ear to bash.”

They were quiet fellows in their thirties, rough-looking but cleanshaven, and one of them was a quarter-caste called Slinger. The others were Charlie and Kev. Gerry was to share a hut with them. The foreman Claude had his own sleeping quarters on the track to the thunder-box. He was permanent.

They were working for a Mister McPhearson, a shadowy figure known only to Claude; and even Claude had seen him less often than he let on. They were on McPhearson's land, using McPhearson's equipment, and it was his timber they were felling and to him, finally, that Claude was responsible. His name was frequently on the foreman's lips, especially when there was some question of authority beyond which there could be no appeal. “Don’ ast me, ast McPhearson,” he'd say. And then humourously: "If you can find ‘im.” Or: "Well now, there you'd be dealin’ with McPhearson. That'd be his department,” and there was something in Claude's smile as he said it that was sly. Inside, he was laughing outright.

Claude had a preference for mysteries. If McPhearson's name hadn't been stamped so clearly on all their equipment they might have decided he was one of Claude's humourous inventions.

Gerry had been sent here to learn, the hard way, about life. It was his father's intention that he should discover at first hand that his advantages (meaning Vine Brothers, which was one of the biggest machine-tool operations in the state) were accidental, had not been earned by him, and were in no way deserved; they did not constitute a proof of superiority. His mother spoiled him, as she did all of them. She had let him believe he was special. That's what his father said. He was out here to learn that he was not. The job had been arranged through a fellow his father knew at the Golf Club, who happened also to know McPhearson. Claude had started off by asking questions, as if he suspected a connection between Gerry and the Boss that had not yet been revealed, but there was none. Just that friend of his father's at the Club.

They worked hard and Gerry kept up with them. He didn't want it to show that what for them was hard necessity was for him a rich boy's choice. All day their saws buzzed, their sweat flew in the forest, and at night they were tired.

There wasn't much talk. Gerry, who usually fell asleep immediately they'd eaten, and had to be shaken to go to bed, got very little of the wisdom of the wider world out of what was said when they had swallowed their stew, drunk their tea, and were just sitting out in the smell of timber and burnt leaves under the stars.

“You should watch out f’ loose women,” one of the fellows said once. He seemed to be joking.

“I been watchin’ out for ‘em,” Slinger said. “There ain't none around ‘ere that I been able to discover.” He looked off into the shifting, stirring dark.

“No,” the third fellow said bitterly, "it ain't the loose women you need t’ watch out for, it's the moral ones. A moral woman'll kill a man's spirit. The others—” But he bit off the rest of what he might have to tell. It went on silently behind his eyes, and the others, out of respect for something personal, fell into their own less heavy forms of silence.

It was Claude who provided most of the talk.

“One time,” Claude told, "I was stoppin’ at this boarding-house in Brisbane. I was workin’ at the abatoors then, it was just after the war. Well, at the boarding-house there was this refugee-bloke, an’ sometimes after tea, if I din’ feel like playin’ poker or listenin’ t’ Willy Fernell and Mo, this bloke an’ me'd sit out on the front step in the cool. Not talkin’ much — I wasn’ much of a talker in them days. But I s'pose he reckoned I was sort of sympathetic, I din’ rib ‘im like the rest. He was a Dutchman, or a Finn — one of that lot. Maybe a Balt. Anyway a thin feller with very good manners, and exceptionally clean — exceptionally. On'y ‘e was as mad as a meat axe. I mean, one day ‘e'd be that quiet you couldn’ get a word out of ‘im, and the next ‘e'd be on the booze and ravin'. ‘E kept the booze under his bed. Vodka. Talked like a drain when ‘e was pissed, an’ all stuff you couldn’ make sense of. He was hidin’ from someone — some other lot, I never did find out who — you know what these New Australians are like. Look ‘ere mate, I'd tell ‘im, there's no politics here, this is Australia. But ‘e'd just look at me as if I was soft or somethink. And in fact he was loaded — God knows what ‘e didn’ have stacked away, jewellery an’ that — I saw some of it—'e could of lived in any place he liked — at Lennon's even. ‘E'd be in his sixties now, that bloke — I often wonder what happened to ‘im … Anyway, we were sit-tin’ out on the step one night, jus’ cool in our shirtsleeves, havin’ a bit of a smoke, when the cicadas start up. ‘What's that?’ ‘e says, jumpin’ to ‘is feet. ‘Cicadas,’ I tell ‘im. ‘Chicago?’ he says, all wild-eyed, ‘the gangsters?’ I had t’ laugh, but it was pathetic jus’ the same. The poor bugger thought ‘e'd got ‘imself to America, thought it was machine-guns.