Lantana Lane (14 page)

And of course we should like to know how he lost his eye; but we never shall. Perhaps it was in a fight; or perhaps, like Joe Hardy, he got in the way of something during a cyclone. We do not like to admit even the possibility that some degraded human being took a shot at him, but if this was so, he has certainly exacted full compensation since.

Above all, we wonder why there should be between men and kookaburras the curious affinity which Nelson has so remarkably developed and extended in his association with ourselves. Did it always exist? Were his ancestors as much at home beside the camp fires of our dark predecessors as he and his contemporaries are in our backyards? Or did they, sitting on high boughs with their heads vigilantly cocked sideways, and observing that our cultivation of the soil turned up many worms and grubs, decide that it might be worth while to establish cordial relations? Did they recognise our muskets as being more lethal than boomerangs, and reflect that the best defence against someone who possesses a horror-weapon is to make friends with him? Kookaburras are extremely sagacious birds, and we think this very likely.

Whatever the reason, it must be a potent and subtle magic they have worked upon us since 1788 and all that. For have we not passed over the gorgeous parrot, the stately brolga, the sapphire-eyed bower-bird, the towering emu, the majestic eagle, and even that fabulous virtuoso of song and dance with the lyre-shaped tail, to find our
genius loci
in this plump, grey fowl which we at first called by the opprobious name of Jackass? He must possess some necromantic art—and of course he does. He can laugh.

Secure in the knowledge that no one can contradict us, we relate that one morning when the mists were rising from the harbour where the First Fleet lay at anchor, a nameless marine espied a kookaburra on a branch, and raised his musket to his shoulder. His finger, crooked over the trigger, was just about to tighten when he observed a pulsing in its white throat, and heard a sound, half-chuckle and half-cluck, which grew louder and louder, faster and faster while the pulsation gathered strength and speed to match, and the powerful beak lifted and lifted till it pointed at the sky. The sound and spectacle of this preposterous bird as it sat there shaking from beak-tip to tail-tip with enjoyment of some private joke caused the stupefied marine to relax his trigger finger; for although he was not, by the standards of 1788, a gentleman, and would have shot a sitting bird without compunction, he hesitated (not being particularly hungry at the moment) to shoot a laughing one.

Later, when he and his compatriots became very hungry indeed, anything went into the cooking pot, including the Jackass, who was contributing the only laughter heard just then. But because that laughter was the strangest sound in a strange place, it was already identified more closely than any other with the land—and this, no doubt, was the first stage of our bewitchment. From that moment we were spellbound. For it was a sound growing familiar as the place lost strangeness; a sound accepted as the place became a home; and thus, at last, the very voice of a place beloved.

Small wonder, then, that Nelson has us all by the short hairs—especially the Kennedys.

When they first arrived he was sitting on the corner of their verandah roof, so he had an excellent opportunity to study them before they were even aware of his existence. It is probable that he unerringly recognised them as the most promising pair of suckers who had ever entered his territory, and certain that he set out to woo them without delay.

It was a pushover. Now he has only to appear, and they drop whatever they are doing, and hasten to the fridge where, in a special receptacle, his food supply awaits his pleasure. He takes up his position on the porch railing outside the kitchen door—craning his head so that his good eye can see round the corner—and watches the preparation of his meal with some slight impatience. Bruce often causes unconscionable delay by warming the semi-frozen meat in hot water, and Marge makes altogether too much fuss about cutting it up; does he not swallow a plump mouse whole, and can he not get a smallish snake down in two minutes flat? But at last, when they are finished with all this nonsense, he flies in on to the table, and picks the morsels delicately from their fingers. Should one stick to his beak, they are quick to release it for him; should a shake of his head send a broken-off fragment flying across the room to slap wetly on a wall or a window-pane, they rush to retrieve it, and offer it again; should he miss a scrap because it is lying on his blind side, they assiduously push it into his line of vision. He knows as well as anyone in the Lane when it is meat-day, for then Marge cuts his portion from their own piece of steak, and Nelson lives in hope that he may some day get off with the whole two pounds. He makes a bold effort now and then; so far Marge has always grabbed it back in time, although—with his claws braced against the edge of the table, his strong wings flapping and his formidable beak gripping like a vice—he makes her work for it. Bruce (who never descended to baby-talk for his children) calls him by absurd pet names, and offers him quite unnecessary encouragement by uttering peculiar, clucking noises. When he elects to dine on Marge's knee, she babbles the most preposterous endearments, and allows him to bash his meat on her skirt.

It is true that Bruce is often torn between his slavish devotion to Nelson, and his strong regard for earthworms. From his reading in the science of agronomics he has learned that a rich acre may support a worm population of up to eight millions, and he has also noted Darwin's estimate that these industrious creatures will, in congenial conditions, deposit upon the surface of the ground no less than ten tons of worm-casts per acre per year. Being Bruce, he of course did the sum which these two bits of data clearly inspire; but when he told Marge the result of his calculations, she said she thought one-twentieth of an ounce per worm, per acre, per year was nothing to write home about. Bruce explained severely that this was a point of merely academic interest; jeer as you might at the achievement of one solitary worm, the fact remained that eight million worms constituted free earth-moving equipment by means of which nitrogen, potash, phosphate, pre-digested humus and what have you were placed where they would do most good. Consequently, when he sees something pink wriggle in the earth turned up by his spade, he glances furtively around at the adjacent trees and fence-posts, and buries it again with all haste. But if Nelson finds his own worm, Bruce philosophically adopts a neutral position, and watches the contest with mixed feelings. For it must be understood that our worms are fine, muscular specimens up to two feet long, and they do not yield without a struggle. Nelson, with one end in his beak, digs his claws hard into the ground, leans backward, and pulls; the exposed portion of the worm stretches like a string of pink rubber, but underground the rest of it keeps a determined hold upon Mother Earth, and suddenly contracts with a power that jerks Nelson forward on to his beak. He braces himself again, and the tug-of-war continues; but the worm never wins. Sometimes it breaks in two, and the submerged half makes its escape while Nelson is busy with the rest; this may fairly be called a draw. But more often Nelson is triumphant, and Bruce, seeing his humble, subterranean ally vanish inch by inch down the victor's throat, sadly accepts the fact that one-twentieth of an ounce of his topsoil will not be what it might have been.

Thanks to the Kennedys' hospitality, Nelson has learned much about the hazards to be encountered in houses. He has never forgotten how the back of a canvas chair swivelled under his weight, and shed him on the floor; and he mistrusts newspapers, too, for a surface which looks quite solid may prove to be otherwise if it is projecting over the edge of a table. He is profoundly suspicious of basins, having perched on the edge of one which tipped up, and flooded him with milk, and upon another occasion, alighted in water hot enough to be uncomfortable. He also takes care that windows are really open before he flies through them, for he jarred his beak badly the day he cracked a pane of glass. There was one trying period when he almost decided to abandon the Kennedys altogether. This was when Marge was doing some painting, and it is debatable whether her nerves or Nelson's were the more sorely tried when he came in to land upon sticky window-sills. It was but natural that his own discomfort, as well as her agitated cries and gestures, should make him seek another perch as quickly as he could, but this often made her behave more strangely than ever; to this day you can see, if you look closely, traces of his white footprints upon many of her possessions.

On the other hand, he has discovered that there is no more agreeable roost for a cold morning than a freshly-filled teapot with a cosy over it. Smoke-oh at the Kennedys' is apt to be complicated by this fact, for the cordial warmth seeping up through his down makes Nelson feel comatose, and he pays no attention when Marge asks him to move, so that she may pour a second cup for Bruce.

“Look, Nelson,” she pleads, “get off, will you?”

He blinks his one eye at her sleepily. She waves her hands in despair and cries.

“
Get off,
Nelson! Shoo!”

He settles himself more comfortably, and his beak nestles deeper into his fluffy breast. What a shame to disturb him! She says grudgingly to Bruce:

“Well, if you really
do
want another cup, you'll have to lift him off, that's all.”

And Bruce—poor doting ninny—replies quickly that he really doesn't.

About sundown Nelson calls it a day. But before he makes for home he usually joins a couple of his friends for a while on one of the electric light poles—and what passes between them we only wish we knew. There are confidential clucks, low gurgles of disbelief, more clucks, and a few throaty chuckles; can he be telling anecdotes about us? We have an uneasy suspicion that, if this is so, we appear in them less as lords of creation, awesome and powerful, than as comical creatures devoid of either wisdom or repose, but well-meaning enough, and eminently exploitable. At all events, he—or one of his companions—or some aunt or cousin elsewhere in the Lane—suddenly begins to laugh. Since nothing is more infectious than laughter, this naturally starts all the others laughing too. From everywhere within earshot they join in, lifting their beaks towards the golden sky, and releasing in chorus the wild, ripe, strident voices whose ribald joviality is a sly satire on the mellifluous notes of other birds. The air rings and shakes with hilarious sound until one subsides into ruminative chuckles, and then a second, and then a third; and just as the last is recovering his gravity, the first is seized by another paroxysm which sets the whole chorus going at full strength again.

But the sun is setting; it is almost down behind the Hawkins' house. Gradually they fall into silence, and one by one they fly away. The echoes of their laughter fade, leaving a hush soon to be broken by the sad cry of the mo-poke.

There goes Nelson, passing over Herbie Bassett's roof with a last ray of sunlight gilding his wings as he banks to turn towards the scrub. Now he is skimming low above the Hawkins' pines where the ground dips into shadow; and now, grey in the grey twilight, he is gone.

But he will be back to-morrow to levy tribute on the Lane.

T
HE POSITIVELY
anti-social recklessness of those who deliberately go in for small farming has, we think, no parallel in human behaviour. It may be likened to the irresponsibility of artists, but it surpasses even this in impudence; for whereas no artist expects more than a few ha'pence and some kicks, these would-be, must-be and will-be farmers actually believe that the world owes them a living, and expect to get it.

The thing is still more amazing when it manifests itself in the young, who are nowadays afforded every opportunity to learn that he who engages in small-scale and solitary effort, does so at his peril. We live, as our mentors so frequently remind us, in an era of expansion. Commerce and industry extend their operations, organisations multiply, and science reaches into outer space, thus setting the pattern which faithfully repeats itself in all our products and activities. Transport increases its capacity, and moves faster, buildings climb higher, newspapers grow fatter, roads grow wider, crowds grow bigger, problems grow tougher, cars grow longer, bangs grow louder and prices shoot ever higher, with wages in hot pursuit. In short, our age is content with nothing less than the super-colossal.

In such a society the properly instructed young person will do well to examine very narrowly the type of toil to which he commits himself. He will, if he is fully in tune with the times, eschew primary production altogether, for the greatest honours and rewards are undoubtedly reserved for the handlers; but if he must engage in production of this kind, it is imperative that he should produce a lot. If he is prepared to weigh in with ten thousand bushels of wheat, or five hundred bales of wool, he will deserve—and receive—the support of a benevolent Government, and the plaudits of a grateful public; but these are not to be expected by one who contributes a few crates of pineapples, or a few bags of beans. There is nothing super-colossal about that.

Similarly, if you let loose upon the world some fruit of your mind which proves tasty to vast numbers of other minds, you may win acclaim, and even some pecuniary advantage; but the provision of nourishment for the few—however wholesome it may be, and however great their hunger—is a dilletante occupation which modern society regards with disfavour and suspicion.

For this there is good reason. The small-scale production of sustenance—whether mental, physical or spiritual—exposes the producer to certain subversive influences—namely, nature and solitude. These influences render him quite unfit for useful participation in the affairs of an advanced civilisation, for they make him think, and wait, and stare, and dream. The small farmer works alone, and thus communes a good deal with nature, in whose leisurely habits he necessarily acquiesces, since he cannot command the human and mechanical assistance by means of which the big farmer goads her into brisker activity. And the small artist—such as, for example, Shakespeare, Beethoven or Michelangelo—betakes himself to a solitary tower (which may, or may not be constructed of ivory, but in which, contrary to general opinion, he works like a beaver, and undergoes peculiar torments), and there coolly assumes that if he needs a year to achieve the right word, note or line, then a year he must have.

Can you imagine such presumption? What makes small-scale activity so undesirable and dangerous is clearly the solitude it involves, and the temptation, inherent in solitude, to think. For thinking takes time, and in an expanding era the one thing which contracts is time. There is simply not enough of it for profitless nonsense of this kind. To do is recognised as the aim and duty of all good citizens; to be is something that could exercise the mind of none but an irresolute mooncalf like Hamlet. To know how is the hallmark of merit; to wonder what, why or whether is little short of sabotage. The proper study of mankind is not man, but matter, and its rich, abundant fruits may be seen all around us, from plastic dish-mops in the kitchen to Sputniks in the sky. And though we are already indebted for so much to those who pursue this study, our expanding society does not yet permit them to rest upon their laurels, but, like the Red Queen, tirelessly urges them forward, crying : “Faster! Faster!” But perhaps this is not a happy simile, for the Red Queen was getting nowhere at all, whereas know-how is well on the way to the planets, and may be expected to set its civilising mark quite soon upon those backward areas.

One might reasonably suppose that the splendour and spaciousness of such an age could not fail to capture the allegiance of all young persons, and render the notions of growing spinach, or writing poems quite ludicrous to them. Heaven knows, we have spared no effort in demonstrating that only suckers make and grow, but clever people handle. It is disturbing, therefore, to find that some still entertain and even succumb to, such atavistic impulses; and among the mature, as they faithfully pursue more useful avocations, one discovers an astonishing number of frustrated farmers and artists. This might be cause for serious alarm if one did not feel secure in the corrective power of modern environment.

There is, of course, one small problem whose solution as yet eludes us; if there were no suckers to do the primary producing, there would be nothing for the clever people to handle. In a defeatist moment, one might envisage our society all organised some morning to proceed with its handling of the primary produce—and lo, there is none! The shops are open, the assistants are present, the middlemen are at their posts, the trains, trucks, ships and factories, all suitably manned, are waiting, and the housewives are setting out with their baskets—but where are the fruit and vegetables? . . . Where are the eggs and butter? . . . The entrepreneurs are in their offices, the editors and publishers are at their desks, the paper-supply—all the way from standing forest to retail stationer—is being attended to, the paints, pianos and typewriters are provided, the concert-halls, theatres and galleries are prepared, the radio networks are ready to give out, the technicians are adjusting their mysteries, and the announcers are clearing their throats—but where are the stories and symphonies? . . . Where are the songs and statues? . . . Where are the plays and pictures? . . . Is this a strike?

Certainly not. Suckers have no idea of collective action. Their tendency to break ranks and march off by themselves quite precludes any such thing. They are notorious for their perverse and tiresome independence, and you simply cannot get them organised. No, no; it is not a strike. It is the triumph of the
Zeitgeist.
Like the dinosaurs and the pterodactyls, these dopes have failed to mesh with their environment—and they are gone. We are all handlers now, and while we look around for something to handle, we hear the ominous hiss of escaping air as our expanding age begins to collapse like a punctured balloon. . . .

But this is mere fantasy—a nightmare unworthy of the civilised mind. Science is at the controls, and will steer us safely to wherever we are going. As a temporary measure it will, no doubt, permit farming only upon a super-colossal scale, but we may rest assured that in due course it will devise means of producing all foodstuffs in its laboratories. And it will surely toss off (for even scientists have their playful moments) a machine to deliver works of art as needed—and not unsettling ones, either, like those we have been compelled to put up with in the past.

Thus reassured, and able to confront without too much apprehension the knowledge that suckers still infest the earth, we may turn once more to Lantana Lane, which harbours as many to the acre as any spot in the world; and among them, we regret to say, Tim and Biddy Acheson, who are young enough to know better.

Some future author of a thesis upon the decline and fall of suckerdom will eagerly seize upon Tim as one whose life provides an interesting case history in illustration of the transition stage. For Tim did not yield without a struggle to the fatal tendencies which at last landed him in the Lane. Having—in common with his contemporaries—clearly grasped the truth that whatever else one may be, one must not be a sucker, he valiantly suppressed the disreputable urges which he could feel clamouring within him, and became a bank clerk.

It must be evident to anyone that banking is the last word in handling. Other individuals or organisations may handle the primary produce at one, or two, or five, or ten removes, but banks handle what may be termed the produce of the handlers, and are thus the very apex of civilisation. Tim was, therefore, potentially one of the
élite.
He had a respectable position at a respectable salary in the most respectable of all human institutions, and he could look forward to a respectable future, with the probability of advancement to considerable heights of dignity and affluence. But he relapsed into suckerdom.

Perhaps if he had not been assigned to a branch in a rural district, this might not have happened; but as it was, there were farms all about him, and even from his post at the teller's window he could see through the plate glass opposite a glimpse of pineapples growing on a distant hillside. . . .

But surely, you will say, shocked, he also saw something of farmers' current accounts? True. He did, and what he saw kept him warily anchored to his counter for eight long years. But he went on looking at the pineapples, and his suckerdom—quelled, but not yet slain—went on whispering to him its age-old arguments. He needn't be rash; he could save up, and
then
have a go. . . . He'd find a nice little place (a bit run down, for preference so that the price would not be too high), and he'd be able to put down the whole lot in cash (or very nearly all of it), so that he wouldn't start with a debt on his shoulders (or only a very small one), and he'd see that he had a few hundred in reserve to tide him over the first year or two, and he'd work like Hell, and it was a grand, healthy life, and you were your own boss, and with a cow, and hens, and home-grown fruit and vegetables you could live cheaply. . . .

In due course he found himself a girl called Biddy who had a dash of suckerdom in her too, and explained all this to her while she listened, starry-eyed. So they both saved up, and dreamed of the day when they would be married, and live on a little farm of their own.

Here they were, then, at last, in Lantana Lane. Their farm had three acres of citrus—two of which (one of oranges and one of grapefruit) had only recently come into bearing; there were three acres of pineapples (though one of these was overdue for replanting), and there was an eastern slope where bananas would do well some day. Except for the cow-paddock and the fowlyard the rest was under lantana, but Tim planned to use it for avocadoes later on. He said he liked to have several different crops, because if you didn't catch a good market with one, you were sure to with another. There was a permanent creek, so they would be able to irrigate when they could afford to put in pipes and spray-lines and a pump. There was also a good Jersey cow, and she was in calf; Tim, as an ex-banker, named her Currency Lass, but they called her Lassie for short. Biddy fell in love with her, and so did Tim, though he preferred to stress the point that any heifer calves she produced would fetch a good price. The house . . . well, Biddy thought it could be made quite nice in time, with a new stove, and the white-anted floorboards replaced, and some new guttering, and plenty of paint.

The older citrus trees were fine big ones—and so they should have been, because they had begun bearing twenty years ago, and were now tired of it. Tim was disconcerted when he discovered this, but he consoled himself with the thought of the nest-egg tucked away in his bank account, and reckoned they could get along on what the pines and the new citrus brought in. Meanwhile, he set about the task of abolishing the worn-out trees, and decided to plant avocadoes in their place. He tried grubbing them out, but he soon realised that this was too slow a method to be economically sound, so he told Biddy they would have to plunge, and hire a bulldozer. It had half a dozen other jobs to do first, but it turned up one morning about a month later, and in no time had the whole patch as bare as your hand, and the slaughtered trees all pushed together in heaps for burning. But of course you cannot buy such miracles for nothing, and the bill was no joke. However, as Tim said by way of cheering Biddy—and himself—as he wrote out the cheque, time is money, and if you looked at it that way, they had saved more than they had spent. Biddy darted a sidelong look at her store bill, and wondered how she could pay it with time, but she said nothing.

Tim worked like a slave preparing the new ground, and a good deal more money went into it in the shape of fertiliser, and at last he was ready to replant. But somehow his savings were already dwindling faster than he had expected. As befitted one highly trained in the handling of money, he kept his books with meticulous care, and in the neat columns devoted to expenditure upon cartage, freight, case-timber, wood-wool, rates, telephone rental, sprays, petrol, oil, fence-posts and a new tank, he was able to see how the pounds were melting away. He was not one of those who, at a loss to account for mysteriously vanished pennies and shillings, reserve a kind of desperation-column called Sundry; he knew exactly how much he had spent upon such trifles as nails, stencil-ink, timber-chalk, a roll of wire, a few screws, a few staples, an axe handle, a bag of lime, a sheet of corrugated iron, a new anchor bolt and a new hinge for the gate. The total looked disturbing when set against the total of his takings.