Best Australian Short Stories (33 page)

When rain came it fell at the Beach in a prodigious waste. It drove down in a heavy mass for days, sometimes weeks, on end. A thousandth part of it would have been more than ample for the few straggling pumpkin-vines, the occasional pie-melons and chokos that constituted the inhabitants’ gardens. It belted loudly on the red iron roofs scattered through the tea-trees and banksias. It came in from the open sea between the headlands at either end of the long curved beach like an advancing grey wall. It flogged the sea flat, belted the sloping sand smooth, filled the tea-tree swamp, swelled the weed- and swamp-stained acre of lake till sometimes it broke through the sand-silted block and emptied its brown, wine-like water and its land-locked fish for a while into the sea.

Then Mr Grigg took his Sunday stroll in rubber knee-boots, black oilskin, black sou’wester. He leant his meagre frame against the gale, trudging the hardened sand. Hands in the oilskin pockets. Hunched like a black pigmy. The lumps of rain struck him. They bumped from his shoulders up under his neck and trickled down his chest-bone. For all his protective covering, he returned to his

shop wet. He did so again the next Sunday, if it was raining twice as hard.

Mr Grigg never fished on Sundays. That there was no church at the Beach made him all the more meticulous in keeping the Sabbath, in his fashion, holy. He compensated his soul with the thought that you could commune there in the Almighty’s own vast cathedral, though its roof did leak rather badly at times. As you went along communing, you might, without desecration, spot out holes and channels in the breakers that would be likely places for jewfish and bream. Next night, the Sabbath over, you could be off down the track through the tea-trees and she-oaks and along the beach to cast out at the prospected spot, marked by the gibbet silhouette of a banksia up on the sand-ridge.

It was a local legend of Mr Grigg that one Saturday night he hooked a tremendous jewy. He had out a brand new two hundred yards of No. 12. The jewy made him use the lot of it. It drew him out into the surf up to his waist. Not so good a fisherman, stones heavier than Mr Grigg, would have had no chance with it. As it was, the struggle in the night took him four miles along the beach. With the whole of the taut line out, the fight lasted for over two hours. Then, not having landed it by midnight, Mr Grigg threw the log-like cork after it and let it go—rather than desecrate the Sabbath. Anyway, that’s how the tale went.

It wasn’t that many of the others fished, or felt any desire to fish, on Sundays. To them, fishing was something you did if you happened to want fish to eat or, seasonally, when the big black-nose whiting or bream were in. Only an occasional one or two, apart from Mr Grigg, even went out when the huge jewfish were known to be patrolling at night close in in the breakers. Mostly, indeed practically unanimously, they just preferred not to fish. But if there was any one day of the week when they might abandon their preference, or habitual laziness, it was Sunday. Then, perhaps with some visitors down from town, a few of them might wet a line.

They called Mr Grigg Mr Grigg. Friendly enough folk, they could have accepted Mr Grigg going to church on Sundays, and some of the women might have gone, too, and the children been forced to go. It was just that Mr Grigg’s Sabbath abstinence set him apart. It made him superior. And the gap was not lessened by the fact that if there was one thing above all others positive about Mr Grigg, it was that he was a regular crank on fishing.

Great red-shouldered jewfish that he could hardly lift. Bronzed- silver whiting; bream and tarwhine; and brown-backed, white- bellied sand flathead by the dozen. Caught and pulled, turning and leaping through the green-and-white swirl of breakers along the beach by Mr Grigg, and by Mr Grigg given away gratis to any of the inhabitants who would eat fish, or sent by the mail-car up to town, to the hospital. With Mr Grigg’s compliments.

To Mr Grigg, his discovery of fishing was practically a discovery of life itself. Two other discoveries went along with it.

One was that there were seven days in the week, instead of only one. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday—seven. Then start all over again: Monday, Tuesday—each a whole day, a whole twenty-four hours. Not a rush into the city inside the hot, screaming cylinder of an electric train. Bacon department. Put on the white apron. Sharpen the knife. Get busy; “Thank you, madam.” “A beautiful cut, madam.” “A nice piece for boiling? Yes, madam. Let me see now.” Take off the apron. Join the crushing exodus. Rush home again. Read the evening paper. Eat sausages. Put out the light in the single room. Open the window. Sleep.

No. Complete days. Composed of time; of aged hours; of early morning, late morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night. Days and nights. Some wet, some windy, some sunny, some hot; pitch-black, moon-flooded, starlit. Curve of open beach sweeping its twelve miles from headland to headland. Gulls winging over the whitecaps. Surf breaking on the sand. Sunhaze dancing on the horizon. Pelicans floating on the acre of swamp lake. Breaths of loose sand puffed by the wind along the crests of the sandhills. Fish.

Something to discover from the bacon department.

The other discovery had gall in it for Mr Grigg. He read the advertisement, made the great decision, bought the grocery-and-residence shop (three unlined weatherboard rooms in all) at the Beach. The previous owner had amassed wealth there. Enough of it to go to the south that Mr Grigg came from and buy a pub in salubrious surroundings. Paddington.

Mr Grigg did not do so well. He made less than his bacon department wages. The inhabitants did not do anything so incredible as ostracizing Mr Grigg. By no means. They did not feel that way about him at all. He could have dressed in purple tights and painted his face ultramarine. He could even have built a church. That would have been his affair. The inhabitants would have been surprised, perhaps, but would shortly have got used to it and accepted it.

There was only the one shop anyway. Grigg’s, formerly McCarthy’s.

The reason for Mr Grigg’s failure was the reason for McCarthy’s wealth. It was not what was in the tins and jars on the sandy shelves. It was in what McCarthy kept under the counter. It was twenty-five miles up river to the town. The male inhabitants relied on McCarthy to make that immaterial to them. So did those who’ came down and lived in tents at Christmas and Easter.

It was a felon blow to Mr Grigg. It led him to fishing. Fanatically. From then on—in old cabbage-tree hat, old coat, trousers rolled to the knees, bare-footed—he lived fish, talked fish and fished. Except on Sundays.

Some, perhaps—the dilettanti who wet a line about once a year, when on holidays, and wouldn’t know a sergeant baker from a morwong—might not appreciate what that meant to Mr Grigg. They wouldn’t know the wild joy of standing or squatting alone at night on a windy beach, wet to the thighs from getting the heavy jew line well out over the breakers. They would be routed in one black engagement by the driven sand and salt peppering into their eyes and mouths and down their necks. They would shiver in the chill wet winter nights, and be tormented by blazing hearth-fires, warm beds and steaming food. They wouldn’t know the obliteration from a line jerked suddenly taut by a terrific strength; the sizzling of it cutting through the fingers, the whistling of it through the water. Obliteration for anything up to an hour or more till the fifty-pounder was there, phosphorescent, thumping and leaping up on the beach.

What could they, the inhabitants or anyone else know of what went on in the mind of Mr Grigg, taking his Sabbath stroll? If there is not one already, there should be a Saint Alfred in the exclusive hierarchy. Or there should have been. At least let it stand to his glory in the past tense. Let it stand to his glory, Lord, when he and they and the creatures of Thy making, yea even unto the mis-shapen, the toad-fish in the shallows, the pelicans on the beach, come up for the judgment.

The pelican Mr Grigg saw on his Sabbath stroll squatted on the sand away ahead of him. As he approached, Sunday-neat in cream flannels, black blazer, panarna, Mr Grigg focused on the old fellow squatting there, great yellow beak pointed out to sea like a signpost. It surprised him, drawing nearer, that the big bird did not get up and float at first awkwardly, then superbly, away. Instead, with a display of confidence that at once touched Mr Grigg, the old fellow got up on his short legs and came towards him. The big feet scarcely marked the sand; but a dragging wing-tip cut a thin line in it. A yard away, half-straightening the thick S-neck, the bird opened up his vast cavern of beak. In his throat he made a raucous, squawking sound. He spread out and flapped his good wing; clattered the long yellow slats of bill together like pieces of board.

Mr Grigg looked down on the grotesque white body, fawn and brown down the wing-edges and over the abrupt square tail. The big bird squatted on his yellow webbed feet, looking up expectantly at Mr Grigg with watery brown eyes.

“Hullo,” Mr Grigg cried sympathetically. “What’s the matter with you now? Eli? Broke your wing, is that it? Somebody shot you, eh?”

The bird affirmed Mr Grigg’s deductions. He squawked mo flapped his good wing. Mr Grigg put a friendly hand out to stroke him, but jerked it back as the hook on the end of the long beak nearly caught it. The bird shied off, snapping, backing away, half- falling over the dragging wing. The short white feathers on his neck came up like a dog’s hackle.

It distressed Mr Grigg. Kindliness rebuffed, he turned and began walking back along the beach. After him the pelican waddled, flapping the good wing to try to keep up, with the other drawing a crooked furrow over the damp sand.

The distance between Mr Grigg and the waddling grotesque widened out Mr Grigg’s brow puckered thoughtfully. Gradually, a thought, a turn of mind, an inspiration; fighting at first thinly, then strongly, for acceptance.

Mr Grigg stopped, turned about, waited for the old fellow catch up with him. The pelican came on awkwardly to within a few feet. The good wing flapped; cavernous beak opening and shutting

“Yes, that’s it,” said Mr Grigg loudly. “That’s it, isn’t it, eh? You’re hungry, aren’t you? You want a feed, don’t you? Fish? Fish, eh? Fish,” shouted Mr Grigg. “Fish!
Fish
!”

Opening and clapping his beak, flapping his wing, the grotesque leered at him. It sat back on its hooked spurs watching him. The watery brown eyes glared malevolently. Mr Grigg looked down on it in an ecstasy. He turned again on his heel and went in short, quickened steps along the beach, up the track through the tea-trees and she-oaks, into the shop.

In old trousers and grey flannel shirt, old cabbage-tree hat, boot-less, he emerged again. A small gut line rolled round an empty bottle in one hand. In the other a lidless jam-tin half-filled with sand and seaworms. Bait.

A quiet Sunday afternoon. The breakers falling lazily in slow crashes. Mr Grigg with the surf washing round his shins. The light gut line over the shelf of sand. On the beach the old pelican squatted, grotesque monument of Patience.

The thin line in Mr Grigg’s fingers jerked slightly. At the next jerk he hooked it. Trousers in a wet roll at his knees, barefoot, he backed through the shallow to the sand, pulling it in as he went.

The silver streak of whiting came skipping, gleaming through the water. The old bird, flapping and squawking down, nearly beat him to it. Mr Grigg took the silver streak from the hook. He held it out to the bird, as if he was showing a bone to a dog. The flapping and guttural squawks taken as gratitude, he tossed the fish to the open beak.

The bird caught it deftly in the air. Juggled the still flipping fish between the slats of his bill so that it would pass down his throat head first, without the fins obstructing. Mr Grigg watched entranced. He saw the moving length passing down and swelling out the old bird’s throat.

He saw half a dozen more go the same way. Unawares, oblivious, Mr Grigg had joined the company of the damned.

Alf Grigg, as they speak of him; Alf, as they speak to him; Old Featherlegs, as they not unkindly refer to him—that is, Mr Grigg that was—has moved up all that way socially. He fishes on Sunday, like any other heathen. He fishes on any of the entire seven. The pelican follows him like a feathered dog. Lives with him; camps on the veranda of the shop. Squawks at strangers.

Often they sit there on the veranda together, thinking about fish. Otherwise the shop isn’t much different from when it changed hands. There’s still the same bell without a tongue standing on the counter. On the four sandy shelves a row of biscuit tins, jars of lollies, half-pounds of tea, packets of self-raising flour, tins of camp- pie, boxes of hooks and lines and sinkers.

If the door’s shut, it’s no use knocking. They will be out along the beach, fishing. There’s nothing for it, if you want, say, a drop of overproof rum to warm the cockles of your heart, or a bottle of beer to quench your thirst, but just sit down and wait till they come back.

I HEARD footsteps and I looked up. A man carrying a prospector’s dish was clambering down the bank.