The Best Australian Stories (23 page)

‘A young man who wanted to be a poet once asked for my advice,' he said. ‘I told him. Invest in fine stationery. Be open to all social occasions. Always be shaved by a barber.'

I expected him to smile but his face appeared remote and blank again.

He closed the door behind me.

Outside, the night still held a gentle warmth. Random laughter drifted from the high white cupolas and minarets of the Del Rio apartments next door. A smell of gardenias mingled with the weed and mussel of the sea wall. I flattered myself, as I stood for a moment between the dwarf maples, that he would be standing at the darkened window, watching. Then I began to walk towards my narrow rooms.

Author's Note
. The headquote is the last stanza of Kenneth Slessor's last published poem, which begins ‘I wish I were at Orange …', written for class 5A at Orange in April 1962. It appears in Geoffrey Dutton's
Kenneth Slessor: A Biography
, Penguin, Melbourne, 1991, p. 11.

Mate

Kate Grenville

He'd bought the Akubra and the elastic-sided boots but anyone could see he was a city bugger. Boolowa knew all about Will Bashford, the city bloke who'd bought the Phipps place for a hobby farm.

Hobby farm
. He'd heard the way they said it.

The neighbour, Norm, would have told them all about him. Nice enough bugger, he'd have said. Bit of a no-hoper, but. Norm had seemed to know all about him as soon as they shook hands. You could tell Norm had never been a
no-hoper
. His grip was so strong that Will winced. Sharpe's the name, sharp's the game, he'd said, and laughed, so Will had felt obliged to laugh too.

Will had stopped wondering how people knew straight away. It was like a smell he gave out, the smell of diffidence and uncertainty. He knew he smiled more than a man should, and knew it was the wrong kind of smile: too eager to please.

He was not stupid, he knew that. But his face often was.

Boolowa was a little town like dozens of others out in the bush. Ridiculous wide main street, empty except for a dog crossing slowly from left to right. Shops all crammed up together outdoing each other with pretentious plaster facades. And over everything, the huge sky, pale with heat, and the crows taunting you.

There was a drought on – well, there was always a drought on. But over against the blue hills in the east, big heavy clouds built up every afternoon: heavier and bigger each day, dense-looking sharp-edged clouds with flat bases as if sanded smooth.

Looks like rain, he had suggested to Norm, that first day, meeting him at the gate down on the road. It was just for something to say, but Norm turned straight away to the men in the back of his broad dusty car.

Will here reckons we're in for rain, he said, and a man sunk deep in the back moved his mouth around his cigarette in something that could have been a smile.

Rain, eh? he said, and turned to tell the man next to him. Reckons we'll have rain.

Then they all looked at him.

It was rather more response than Will Bashford would generally have wished for.

It was hard to get it right, with these country folk. You had to be
matey
, of course. If they thought you were
stand-offish
, you might as well pack up and go home. But getting the exact degree of
matiness
right was something Will never seemed to manage.

The country was another planet, though he had got to know the theory of it at Kogarah Public School and they had learned the poem.
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of something something
something, of drought and flooding rains.
They had made the cartridge-paper bullock-dray, the balsa Pioneer Hut, the cardboard shearing shed. They had learned that
Australia Rides on the Sheep's Back
. It had been explained that this was in the nature of a metaphor. Miss McDonald had made damper at home in her oven and brought it in. She had forgotten the salt and it had not been eaten, but they all knew after that what a damper looked like – scorched, unappetising – and admired the pioneers all the more.

So the streets where they lived, the little houses cheek-by-jowl, the lawn-mowing, the rush-hour crowd in the bus, their fathers hot and cross from hanging onto the strap all the way from Central, the man in the back lane with his bag of lollies – all that was not really there. That was just an accidental, temporary thing. Australia was
that land of
sweeping plains
. It was
Click Go the Shears
and
Once a Jolly Swagman
.

It brought on a certain guilt. Will Bashford's natural – almost pathological – diffidence was amplified here in the country, where the very air felt foreign in his nostrils. He was not a proper Australian, in spite of having once memorised what a
blue-bellied joe
and a
coolabah
were, and he knew it showed.

*

He'd got it hopelessly wrong yesterday. He'd gone for a walk, along one of the back roads that led out of town. It was early enough to be cool and pleasant, the sun only just up, the flies half-hearted, the birds carolling away in the trees. The paddocks were soft and silvery in the early slanting sunlight, like something off a calendar.
Communing with
Nature
, he told himself. This is
communing with Nature
.

He was all alone. It was hard to be all alone in the city. Someone was always watching you from between the venetians. Whatever you did, you had to assume it was being done in public. This – being all alone on a little back road, not having to keep the right sort of expression on your face, or look as if you knew what you were doing – made a nice change.

Click go the shears, boys, click, click, click
, he sang. It was exhilarating, belting it out into the stillness of the morning.
Wide is his blow and his
hands mo-ove quick
. He heard his voice wavering, drifting up and down.
Tone-deaf
, Miss McDonald had announced to 3B.
William Bashford,
you're tone-deaf
, and he had felt a clutch of fright, wondering if being tone-deaf was something you got sent to the principal for.
Stand at the
back, William, and just move your lips
.

He'd been an obedient boy. Being obedient was half of being a no-hoper. He had stood up the back and just moved his lips for years.

But he loved to sing.
The ringer looks around and dah-di-dah-di-dah,
and curses the old something with the blue-bellied joe!
A cow lifted its head from the grass and stared.

Things had gone wrong when he saw a house he thought was derelict. He'd stopped, his hand on the cool metal of the gate, tempted to explore. This old place had its roofing iron curling at the seams, the grass was long around the rotting veranda, the house and the faded old red truck beside it all up to their ankles in dry grass. He liked poking around old places, but he'd been caught out before. You'd think a place was abandoned, but suddenly there'd be someone coming down off the veranda, and you'd have to wave in a casual way, and call out
morning, how's it going mate
, and they'd come down to the gate and you'd have to have a conversation about who you were and what you were doing there. By the time you'd got through all that, any idea of
communing with Nature
was well and truly finished.

There were cows in the front yard of this place, tearing at the grass around the water-tank tilting dangerously on its stand. As he watched, an old woman in a long pink nightie ran around the corner of the house waving a stick at a few flustered cows that were lumbering along in front of her. In a surprisingly big voice for such a frail old thing she was shouting
Garn! Gaaaaaarn! Git!

He watched, frozen to the gate, as she herded the cows around to the side and into a paddock. Her nightie, drenched and dark with dew along the hem, swung heavily around her bare feet as she strained to close the ramshackle gate. Her wispy white hair stood up in a ruff around her head, with pink scalp showing through.

She did not see Will, but disappeared around the back of the house. The cows gawped at the place where she had been. Will felt he was gawping too, and reminded himself to blink.

Coming back along the road later, the sun was in his eyes and he kept his head down. The dew had dried on the grass and the birds had been replaced by the cicadas that were starting up one by one, each one drilling away a different note. The flies were taking it in turns to get up his nose.

As he came near the house again he made his stride more purposeful and did not look around. The old woman was in her yard again, still in the pink nightie although there was a pink cardigan over it now. She was standing near the powdery old truck, looking up at the face of a young policeman writing in a notebook. Near them, another policeman bent over with a spring-loaded tape measure, measuring something along the ground. As Will watched, the tape snapped back and the policeman grabbed his hand. His mouth made the word FUCK.

Will walked faster and did not glance over towards the house again, his neck stiff with the ungainly look of a tall person trying to be inconspicuous. He stared into the dusty bushes, at the dusty roadside grass, at the dust itself on the roadway. He was tremendously interested in the dust. But even a man as interested in the dust as he was could not fail to hear the old woman, speaking with one of those well-bred penetrating kinds of voices.

‘If I was going to pinch his bloody cattle, d'you think I'd do it in my bloody nightie?'

He had not pinched any bloody cattle, had not been caught trespassing, had got no further than putting his hand on the gate. Had done nothing wrong, in fact. Why did he feel so guilty, scurrying along with bowed head?

The thing he had done wrong was going for a walk in the first place. Going for a walk was not something you did, out in the country. That alone was asking for trouble.

At least there had been no one listening to him sing.

*

He had the Akubra and the elastic-sided boots, but he had not thought to bring a raincoat with him from Sydney. But the clouds were there again, at the end of Hill Street, as they had been on the first day, big dramatic clouds with serious dark-grey folds that looked full of rain.

He imagined himself out on the paddocks – his own paddocks! – in the rain. He would have to huddle under a garbage bag. Word of that would soon get around.
That Bashford bloke, saw him out on his place in a
bloody garbage bag!
It was easy to get off on the wrong foot in a new place.

Looking down Hill Street, he could see the Criterion Hotel and the milk bar. No raincoats there. There was the butcher, and a draper and mercer that looked as if it had been closed for years. Further along were the Stock & Station Est 1919 and the general store. The general store had a window full of faded and flyspecked cornflakes boxes. It did not look a promising prospect for a raincoat. That left the Stock & Station, whatever that was.

A tall skinny bloke like a long drink of water, all chin and nose, was leaning on the war memorial cairn watching him as he walked slowly along to the shop, carefully, as if he expected to have to give evidence.
Brown hair, brown eyes, big ears.

Quickly, as if he knew exactly where he was going, Will crossed the road towards the Stock & Station. His walk felt jerky as he crossed the vast expanse of Hill Street under the gaze of the chin-and-nose man.
Funny kind of walk.
He forced himself not to
look to the right and look to
the left and look to the right again
. Only a no-hoper would think a car could take you by surprise on Hill Street, Boolowa.

Inside the shop he paused, hearing the door bell jangle above his head. He was going to be Norm Sharpe. Front up to the counter and say
mate
a lot. Easy.

The first problem was finding the counter. After the glare outside, the shop was dark. It would be easy to think those grey overalls were a person. That would get back to Norm.
Feller comes in here, says g'day to the
bloody overalls.

There had been a teacher at school called Mr Overall. Naturally, the kids had called him Mr Underpants.

It was the kind of thing you tended to remember at the wrong moment. He instructed himself not to laugh.
Feller comes in here, laughs
at the bloody overalls.

Beyond the overalls there were shoulder shapes. It was hard to be sure of anything in the dimness, his eyes straining to adjust after the scalding light outside, but he thought the shoulder shapes were not a
mate
either, just a row of checked shirts, with caps on a stand beside them.

He was working out that there must be a counter over on the far wall – there was a gleam of something horizontal cutting across the verticals of the shelving behind – when a voice came from the direction of the gleam.

Help at all, mate?

He thought of laughing and calling out
bit dark in here, mate, nearly
talked to the bloody overalls
! His mouth open for the laugh, he thought better of it. Over the years, he had learned that not everyone thought the same things were funny that he did. New place, new people, no offence intended. Better to play safe.

Ah, yes. Mate.

He dodged around a tower of brown blocks of cow-lick. He could see the man behind the counter now, two blanks of reflected light from glasses turned at him, another long nose, long chin, like the Johnny over the road. Inbreeding. Small gene pool. Probably a lot of long noses and long chins in Boolowa.

After a moment he realised there was a customer at the counter too, a big solid man in a red-checked shirt, standing as still as a pair of overalls.

Sorry, mate, Will said. Didn't see you there.

He made an ushering gesture with his hand, palm up.

Go ahead.

But the man shook his head.

You're right, mate, he said.

Will turned to the shopkeeper. The glasses sat cock-eyed on his face so you wanted to reach over and straighten them up. Tufts of grey hair erupted out of his nostrils.
Eye contact
, Will told himself.
Make eye contact
. But he could not look.