Best Australian Short Stories (18 page)

He got the letter—something unforeseen must have cropped up to prevent his keeping the appointment and would he kindly make another appointment to view the property ? “Perhaps I should have waited a while before making inquiries—not been so hasty.” He burnt the letter. A few days later another one came. “Oh,” he said as he read it, “what a pity. He says here that this place is just the kind of property I’m looking for, but”—he sighed —”what’s the use of my looking at it when I haven’t a feather to fly with—not for the moment, anyway.” He paused. “But, all the same, I would like to see it; you know it would give me some idea on which to base my future plans. But there you are, for the moment it’s not opportune, is it? No use getting too entangled with things until I feel my feet on firmer ground—still it’s most tempting.” This letter found the fire, too, unanswered.

My mother now came back to the business of the shopkeeper’s shelves and asked Father when he was going to clinch the job, so we tidied ourselves and set off for town again, Father saying he’d better give the agent’s place a wide berth—for the time being; must not view any property yet, not in any circumstances—might become involved in some way. But the fates would have it otherwise; we ran into the agent driving along the road.

“Quick! Duck!” Father hissed. But in the same breath he countermanded the order. “No, he’s seen us.” He then strode forward openly and gallantly to meet the agent as he bore down on us.

The agent didn’t look put out as I thought he would, but on the contrary was all smiles, and again took Father’s hand and nearly shook his teeth out.

“Been called away on business?” he asked pleasantly.

“Er—yes,” said my father; “and just got back today.” Then, as an excuse for not keeping the appointment, “I was—er—on my way in now to see you.”

Father was evidently not the only man in the district who gathered strength from Mr Shakespeare. The agent must have also believed that there is a tide in the affairs of men which should be taken at the flood, for before ycu could say Jack Robinson he had whisked us up into his turnout and was bowling us along the road at such a breakneck speed that Father could not have escaped had he wished to.

“Lucky we met, wasn’t it?” said the agent as the trees and fences danced past us in a dizzy row. “Instead of you wasting all this time getting to my office, here you are on your way to view the property.”

“Yes,” said my father lamely, looking down on the road and to the sides of it as if at any moment he might make a sudden, desperate dash for freedom.

Things had now suddenly changed to reality. First Father viewed the orchard, passing along the lines of trees like a general taking the salute, stopping and staring at odd ones. Had you seen him you’d have almost expected him to salute. Next, the rest of the place stood to attention, Father picking up clods of earth and inspecting them as he went along, as he used to pick up bits of quartz and spit on them and look for signs of gold. I was hoping he wouldn’t forget himself and spit on the clods of earth by mistake. The house was then put through its paces, and as we stalked it I saw their kids peeping wonder-eyed from one of the windows—they’d been shut up in a rear room while the man with the money looked at their home.

We had not long been inspecting the place before Father had completely forgotten that he hadn’t a feather to fly with, and was magining himself as its new owner. He beamed on everything, talked and showed such interest and evident satisfaction that I saw the agent looking at the owner and the owner looking at the agent. Then the man went away and brought his wife out. I reckoned he’d rushed in to her and said, “I think it’s sold!” the way she came and smiled on Father.

Then Father, finding himself in their front room, with the wife looking hopefully into his face, the man fiddling with his fingers as if handling the money my father hadn’t got, and the agent with one eye cocked at the ceiling counting up how much of it would be his commission—well, Father looked at this moment as if he’d have liked the floor to give way or an earthquake destroy everything. He could not say now that the place was not what he wanted, so what could he do but say that he would have to think it over. Pressed, he wanted a fortnight to decide. I thought of the poor owner and his poor wife spending that fortnight—waiting. I hoped they wouldn’t get into debt in advance.

When we got home Father told Mother that he expected to hear from the shopkeeper (whom he had not seen) in about a week’s time.

When I asked him later what he was going to do when the fortnight was up, he again looked longingly at the heavens and told me never to cross my bridges until I came to them; that one never knew what might happen in the meantime; a man could be poor today and well off tomorrow. He ended up with his comforting, “While there’s life there’s hope.”

Next day, by way of giving hope a hand (not having found the “other way” of financing it), he again went up to One Stump Hill with the sole and steadfast objective of getting out of that gaunt, bitter, selfish hill the tempting orchard property.

The agent, a tide-and-flood man, too, did not let the long fortnight crawl by. One afternoon when Father had come home tired and dusty, and had taken his boots off and gone into the bedroom to have a rest, the agent called. As it turned out, Mother thought he was the shopkeeper come to see Father about the shelves job; and, wishing to be nice to him, asked him in, and then called out to Father.

Father, suddenly awakened, flustered and not knowing that there was anybody in the front room, did not put his boots on again; and, stepping through the cane curtains, came face to face with the agent. He looked flabbergasted; then, suddenly becoming conscious of the fact that he was in his socks, he reddened up with anger and mortification. I reckoned that he saw at that moment, in his mind’s eye (he didn’t dare look at them), his white toes poking out brazenly and shamelessly from—as it would happen that day— his most destitute-looking pair of socks.

The agent also looked a bit bewildered. Watching him, I saw him try not to see Father’s socks, looking away quickly as if he did not wish to have his faith and confidence shattered. His eyes sought something more heartening, and he looked hurriedly to the left.

Unfortunately, they came right into line with the old couch where the spring poked through. Refusing to see the couch he turned his eyes to the end of the room, where was our old moth-eaten armchair. Hurriedly he stampeded his eyes away from this fresh evidence of our poverty, and escaped to the floor, where the bare boards with the small square of worn lino hit him in the eye. But he wasn’t yet beaten and his escaping eyes turned to the ceiling, where there’d be nothing else to shake his sorely-tried confidence. But there was no ceiling; only rafters, cobwebs, and a tarantula stalking flies. He pulled some papers out of his pocket and kept looking at them to keep his morale up, as if not daring to let his eyes escape again. Staring at the papers, he told Father that he had felt (you’ll notice the “had”) that, as Father had been so satisfied with the place, he had probably made up his mind by this time to buy it.

Then he looked gingerly up from the papers, keeping his eyes in check, and forced a smile, as if having just made up his mind that people who looked hard up are not always so.

Father was still standing in the same spot during these few seconds, as if not daring to move; held spellbound by his feet. All hope, tide taken at the flood and you never know what might turn up, were now gone, and he looked now as if he hadn’t a feather to fly with. The holes in his socks had submerged him, I knew what was in his mind. He had been found out—disgraced. What was the use of his pretending? He knew that It would be just as well for him to finish the matter and get it over “Oh, about the property,” he said. “Well, I’m sorry to have given you so much trouble, but—er—well, the deal’s off.”

The agent never said a word.

“Anyway, for the time being,” Father went on. “Yes; for the moment it’s definitely off.”

The agent’s eyes found my father’s.

Father stumbled on. “However, when the time is ripe I shall—” But he didn’t get any further, for suddenly, maliciously and cruelly the agent looked deliberately and despicably at Father’s seven naked toes. Then he looked nastily at the sofa, snobbishly at the armchair, disdainfully at the floor and unbelievingly at the rafters, cobwebs, and the tarantula, and at last, focusing his hard eyes on those seven toes, he put his papers back in his pocket and left.

There was no parting friendly handshake this time. When the agent got outside he turned and looked our little weather-beaten kipsie over, as if to prove to himself that his first impression had been right and that he had been a mug. And just before he got up into his turnout he stopped and gave the place a long, contemptuous stare.

“Well,” said my mother, “how did all this come about ?”

“Oh, quite simply,” said Father. “I was passing his place and saw no harm in making a simple inquiry. You know, there is a tide in the affairs of—”

“I know,” said Mother, “which, taken at the flood, and so on. Well, all I can say is that it was a great pity the author didn’t put a P.S. to it and say something about drowning as well. It would save some people a lot of trouble and waste of time.”

Father said that perhaps, after all, it would be better for him to keep on as he was going. When all was said and done there’d be more money in his inventions. For instance, there was his deep-sea diving-dress. No diver at present could go down more than a certain depth, whereas his diving-dress would enable a diver to go down to the very depths of the ocean-deep. Mother was looking hard at him. “And as you know, Mother, there’s billions of pounds of bullion and valuables lying in old wrecks at the bottom of the sea. Why, there’s a veritable fortune waiting for the man who—”

“What about the shelves job, Walter?” she said.

I think Father must have seen some look in Mother’s eye, for he said suddenly, “Oh, yes, I must see to that job at once. The diving-dress invention can—er—wait for the moment.” That same afternoon he toddled off to town to see about the shelves job.

After he had gone, I was out in the backyard, and while I was gawking about there Mother came out and began to look about the place. It was looking pretty untidy now. I used to rake up all the rubbish and keep the yard and surroundings nice and tidy, but of late I’d neglected it all, and it was beginning to look as if nobody lived in it. Then I reckoned I saw the look in Mother’s eyes that Father must have seen, so I toddled off, too, and got the rake and began to spruce up the old home again.

EVERY now and then Father used to go on the warpath about something or other, but mostly about Mother’s mismanagement. These storms always ended with Father’s clearing out again—not that he ever went, for he contrived to pack up with such slow care, to be so long preparing to depart, that it was always too late for him to get away that day, and so, in the circumstances, he had to put off “leaving” us until the next day, and by that time the squall had passed over.

If he did not manage it this way he used to fall back on putting so much heavy stuff in his trunk that he couldn’t carry it—which meant waiting for a cart to call for it. In this case, of course, the cart never called.

We always knew when Father’s next squall was approaching; the symptoms were the same. He’d be restless and begin to forage among things—household accounts for preference.

Of course, Mother gave him any amount of material to feed on. Where money and accounts were concerned she was the greatest messer living. Her affairs were always in a muddle, but maybe the fact that she received money in odd amounts and at odd times helped her to get in a muddle and remain in a muddle. And another thing, too, she never bothered about getting proper receipts, and when she did get them managed to lose them more often than not, which, one way or another, led to trouble.

But she had been through so many upsets, weathered so many of Father’s violent temperamental scenes that they were to her now like water on a duck’s back; and when a disturbance was raging she used to whistle through it; a quiet, gentle, subtle whistling. Hers was a steady, monotonous whistle without passion or movement; a cool whistle; an indifferent whistle that refused to be routed or stopped.

This particular tornado blew up in quite a simple manner. Father was mooching about the place and, for something better to do, began to smooth out the ruffles in the heavy red cloth that covered the table; and, rubbing his big flat palm over the cloth, he felt something beneath it—Mother’s store accounts, and in a frightful mess, too. Naturally, he lifted the cloth.

And so it happened in due course—or in a short while—and according to schedule, or precedent all our own, that our little kipsie breathed a heavy stillness like that leaden hush that hangs over tree and earth before a storm breaks; a pressing stillness; a sense of waiting as the earth lies hushed and expectant before the first rumble of thunder claims the sky. And then there was a rustling as of leaves swirling about; a crinkling and crackling—Father excitedly fingering the accounts and pages of figures he had written down.