Kangaroo Page 7

  The vibration from the two men had by this time quite penetrated into the other room and into the consciousness of the two women. Harriet came in all wondering and full of alert curiosity. She looked from one to the other, saw the eyes of both men shining, saw the puzzled, slightly scared look on her husband’s face, and the glowing handsomeness on Jack’s, and she wondered more than ever.

  ‘What are you two men talking about?’ she asked pointedly. ‘You look very much moved about something.’

  ‘Moved!’ laughed Jack, ‘We’re doing fifty miles an hour, and not turning a hair.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m not going with you then,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s much too late at night for me for that sort of thing.’

  Victoria went over to her husband and stood close at his side, ruffling up his brown, short, crisp, bright hair.

  ‘Doesn’t he talk nonsense, Mrs Somers, doesn’t he talk nonsense,’ the young wife crooned, in her singing, contralto voice, as she looked down at him.

  Harriet started at the sudden revelation of palpitating intimacy. She wanted to go away, quick. So did Somers. But neither Jack nor Victoria wanted them to go.

  Jack was looking up at Victoria with a curious smile, touched with a leer. It gave his face, his rather long, clean-shaven face with the thick eyebrows, most extraordinarily the look of an old mask. One of those old Greek masks that give a fixed mockery to every feeling. Leering up at his young wife with the hearty leer of a player masked as a faun that is at home, on its own ground. Both Harriet and Somers felt amazed, as if they had strayed into the wrong wood.

  ‘You talk all the sense, don’t you, kiddie?’ he said, with a strong Australian accent again. And as he spoke with his face upturned to her, his Adam’s apple moved in his strong white throat as if it chuckled.

  ‘Of course I do,’ she crooned in her mocking, crooning contralto. ‘Of course I do.’

  He put his arm round her hips. They continued to look into each other’s faces.

  ‘It’s awfully late. We shall have simply to fly to bed. I’m so sleepy now. Goodnight. Thank you so much for the singing. I enjoyed it awfully. Goodnight!’

  Victoria looked up with a brightly flushed face, entirely unashamed, her eyes glowing like an animal’s. Jack relaxed his grip of her, but did not rise. He looked at the Somers pair with eyes gone dusky, as if unseeing, and the mask-like smile lingering on his face like the reflection from some fire, curiously natural, not even grotesque.

  ‘Find your way across all right?’ he said. ‘Goodnight! Goodnight!’ But he was as unaware of them, actually, as if they did not exist within his ken.

  ‘Well,’ said Harriet, as they closed the door of Torestin. I think they might have waited just two minutes before they started their love making. After all, one doesn’t want to be implicated, does one?’

  ‘One emphatically doesn’t,’ said Somers.

  ‘Really, it was as if he’d got his arm round all the four of us! Horrid!’ said Harriet resentfully.

  ‘He felt he had, I’m sure,’ said Somers.

  It was a period when Sydney was again suffering from a bubonic plague scare: a very mild scare, some fifteen cases to a million people, according to the newspapers. But the town was placarded with notices ‘Keep your town clean,’ and there was a stall in Martin Place where you could write your name down and become a member of a cleanliness league, or something to that effect.

  The battle was against rats, fleas, and dirt. The plague affects rats first, said the notices, then fleas, and then man. All citizens were called upon to wage war with the vermin mentioned. Alas, there was no need to call on Somers to wage the war. The first morning they had awakened in Torestin, it was to a slight uneasy feeling of uncleanliness. Harriet, who hated the thought of contamination, found the apples gnawed, when she went to take one to eat before breakfast. And rat dirts, she said, everywhere.

  Then had started such a cleaning, such a scouring, such a stopping of holes, as Torestin had never known. Somers sourly re-christened the house Toscrubin. And after that, every night he had the joyful business of setting two rat-traps, those traps with the powerful fly-back springs. Which springs were a holy terror to him, for he knew his fingers would break like pipe-stems if the spring flew back on them. And almost every morning he had the nauseous satisfaction of finding a rat pinned by its nose in the trap, its eyes bulging out, a blot of deep red blood just near. Sometimes two rats. They were not really ugly, save for their tails. Smallish rats, perhaps only half grown, and with black, silky fur. Not like the brown rats he had known in the English country.

  But big or little, ugly or not ugly, they were very objectionable to him, and he hated to have to start the day by casting one or more corpses gingerly, by the tip of the tail, into the garbage tin. He railed against the practice of throwing cans and everything promiscuously on to any bit of waste ground. It seemed to his embittered fancy that Sydney harbour, and all the coast of New South Wales, was moving with this pest. It reminded him of the land of Egypt, under the hand of the Lord: plagues of mice and rats and rabbits and snails and all manner of crawling things. And then he would say: ‘Perhaps it must be so in a new country.’ For all that, the words ‘new country’ had become like acid between his teeth. He was always recalling what Flinders Petrie says somewhere: ‘A colony is no younger than the parent country.’ Perhaps it is even older, one step further gone.

  This evening—or rather midnight—he went to the back kitchen to put every scrap of any sort of food beyond rat-reach, and to bait the two traps with bits of cheese-rind. Then he bent back the two murderous springs, and the traps were ready. He washed his hands hard from the contamination of them. Then he went into the garden, even climbed the tub-like summerhouse, to have a last look at the world. There was a big slip of very bright moon risen, and the harbour was faintly distinct.

  Now that night had fallen, the wind was from the land, and cold. He turned to go indoors. And as he did so he heard a motorcar run quickly along the road, and saw the bright lights come to a stop at the gate of Wyewurk. Wyewurk was in darkness already. But a man left the car and came along the path to the house, giving a peculiar whistle as he did so. He went round to the back door and knocked sharply, once, twice, in a peculiar way. Then he whistled and knocked again. After which he must have heard an answer, for he waited quietly.

  In a few minutes more the lights switched on and the door opened; Jack was there in his pyjamas.

  ‘That you, Jaz boy?’ he said in a quiet tone. ‘Why the blazes didn’t you come half an hour sooner, or half a minute later? You got me just as I’d taken the jump, and I fell all over the bloomin’ hedge. Come in. You’ll make a nervous wreck of me between you.’

  The figure entered. It was William James, the brother-in-law. Somers heard him go again in about ten minutes. But Harriet did not notice.

  CHAPTER IV

  JACK AND JAZ

  THE following evening Somers could feel waves of friendliness coming across the hedge, from Victoria. And she kept going out to the gate to look for Jack, who was late returning home. And as she went, she always looked long towards the verandah of Torestin, to catch sight of the Somers.

  Somers felt the yearning and amicable advance in the atmosphere. For some time he disregarded it. Then at last he went out to look at the nightfall. It was early June. The sun had set beyond the land, casting a premature shadow of night. But the eastern sky was very beautiful, full of pure, pure light, the light of the southern seas, next the Antarctic. There was a great massive cloud settling low, and it was all gleaming, a golden, physical glow. Then across the upper sky trailed a thin line of little dark clouds, like a line of porpoises swimming in the extremely beautiful clarity.

  ‘Isn’t it a lovely evening again?’ Victoria called to him as he stood on the summerhouse top.

  ‘Very lovely. Australia never ceases to be a wonderland for me, at nightfall,’ he answered.

  ‘Aha!’ she said. ‘You are fond of the evening?’

&
nbsp; He had come down from his point of vantage, and they stood near together by the fence.

  ‘In Europe I always like morning best—much best. I can’t say what it is I find so magical in the evening here.’

  ‘No!’ she replied, looking upwards round the sky. ‘It’s going to rain.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’ he asked.

  ‘It looks like it—and it feels like it. I expect Jack will be here before it comes on.’

  ‘He’s late tonight, is he?’

  ‘Yes. He said he might be. Is it six o’clock?’

  ‘No, it’s only a little after five.’

  ‘Is it? I needn’t be expecting him yet, then. He won’t be home till quarter past six.’ She was silent for a while. ‘We shall soon have the shortest day,’ she said. ‘I am glad when it has gone. I always miss Jack so much when the evening comes, and he isn’t home. You see I was used to a big family, and it seems a bit lonely to me yet, all alone in the cottage. That’s why we’re so glad to have you and Mrs Somers next door. We get on so well, don’t we? Yes, it’s surprising. I always felt nervous of English people before. But I love Mrs Somers. I think she’s lovely.’

  ‘You haven’t been married long?’ asked Somers.

  ‘Not quite a year. It seems a long time in some ways. I wouldn’t be without Jack, not for anything. But I do miss my family. We were six of us all at home together, and it makes such a difference, being all alone.’

  ‘Was your home in Sydney?’

  ‘No, on the South Coast—dairy farming. No, my father was a surveyor, so was his father before him. Both in New South Wales. Then he gave it up and started this farm down south. Oh yes, I liked it—I love home. I love going down home. I’ve got a cottage down there that father gave me when I got married. You must come down with us some time when the people that are in it go. It’s right on the sea. Do you think you and Mrs Somers would like it?’

  ‘I’m sure we should.’

  ‘And will you come with us for a weekend? The people in it are leaving next week. We let it furnished.’

  ‘We should like to very much indeed,’ said Somers, being polite over it because he felt a little unsure still, whether he wanted to be so intimate. But Victoria seemed so wistful.

  ‘We feel so ourselves with you and Mrs Somers,’ said Victoria. ‘And yet you’re so different from us, and yet we feel so much ourselves with you.’

  ‘But we’re not different,’ he protested.

  ‘Yes, you are—coming from home. It’s mother who always called England home. She was English. She always spoke so prettily. She came from Somerset. Yes, she died about five years ago. Then I was mother of the family. Yes, I am the eldest, except Alfred. Yes, they’re all at home. Alfred is a mining engineer—there are coal mines down the South Coast. He was with Jack in the war, on the same job. Jack was a Captain and Alfred was a Lieutenant. But they drop all the army names now. That’s how I came to know Jack: through Alfred. Jack always calls him Fred.’

  ‘You didn’t know him before the war?’

  ‘No, not till he came home. Alfred used to talk about him in his letters, but I never thought then I should marry him. They are great friends yet, the two of them.’

  The rain that she had prophesied now began to fall—big straight drops, that resounded on the tin roofs of the houses.

  ‘Won’t you come in and sit with us till Jack comes?’ asked Somers. ‘You’ll feel dreary, I know.’

  ‘Oh, don’t think I said it for that,’ said Victoria.

  ‘Come round, though,’ said Somers. And they both ran indoors out of the rain. Lightning had started to stab in the south-western sky, and clouds were shoving slowly up.

  Victoria came round and sat talking, telling of her home on the south coast. It was only about fifty miles from Sydney, but it seemed another world to her. She was so quiet and simple, now, that both the Somers felt drawn to her, and glad that she was sitting with them.

  They were talking still of Europe, Italy, Switzerland, England, Paris—the wonderworld to Victoria, who had never been out of New South Wales in her life, in spite of her name—which name her father had given her to annoy all his neighbours, because he said the State of Victoria was run like a paradise compared to New South Wales—although he too never went a yard out of his home state, if he could help it; they were talking still of Europe when they heard Jack’s voice calling from the opposite yard.

  ‘Hello,’ cried Victoria, running out. ‘Are you there, Jack? I was listening for the motorbike. I remember now, you went by tram.’

  Sometimes she seemed a little afraid of him—physically afraid—though he was always perfectly good-humoured with her. And this evening she sounded like that—as if she feared his coming home, and wanted the Somers to shelter her.

  ‘You’ve found a second home over there, apparently,’ said Jack, advancing towards the fence. ‘Well, how’s things?’

  It was dark, so they could not see his face. But he sounded different. There was something queer, unknown about him.

  ‘I’ll come over for a game of chess tonight, old man, if you’ll say the word,’ he said to Somers. ‘And the ladies can punish the piano again meanwhile, if they feel like it. I bought something to sweeten the melodies with, and give us a sort of breathing-space now and then: sort of little ear-rest, you know.’

  ‘That means a pound of chocolates,’ said Victoria, like a greedy child. ‘And Mrs Somers will come and help me to eat them. Good!’ And she ran in home. Somers thought of a picture advertisement in the Bulletin.

  ‘Madge: I can’t think what you see in Jack. He is so unintellectual.’

  ‘Gladys: Oh, but he always brings a pound of Billyer’s chocolates.’

  Or else: ‘Sweets to the Sweet. Give her Billyer’s chocolates’; or else: ‘Billyer’s chocolates sweeten the home.’

  The game of chess was a very quiet one. Jack was pale and subdued, silent, tired, thought Somers, after his long day and short night. Somers too played without any zest. And yet they were satisfied, just sitting there together, a curious peaceful ease in being together. Somers wondered at it, the rich, full peace that there seemed to be between him and the other man. It was something he was not used to. As if one blood ran warm and rich between them. ‘Then shall thy peace be as a river.’

  ‘There was nothing wrong at the Trewhellas’, was there, that made William James come so late?’ asked Somers.

  Jack looked up with a tinge of inquiry in his dark eyes at this question: as if he suspected something behind it. Somers flushed slightly.

  ‘No, nothing wrong,’ said Jack.

  ‘I beg your pardon for asking,’ said Somers hastily. ‘I heard a whistle when I’d just done setting the rat-traps, and I looked out, and heard you speak to him. That’s how I knew who it was. I only wondered if anything was wrong.’

  ‘No, nothing wrong,’ repeated Jack laconically.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Somers. ‘It’s your move. Mind your queen.’

  ‘Mind my queen, eh? She takes some minding, that lady does. I feel I need a special eye at the end of my nose, to keep track of her. Come out of it, old lady. I’m not very bright at handling royalty, that’s a fact.’

  Somers was now silent. He felt he had made a faux pas, and was rebuffed. They played for some time, Jack talking to himself mostly in that facetious strain which one just had to get used to in him, though Somers occasionally found it tiring.

  Then after a time Jack put his hands into his lap, and looked up at Somers.

  ‘You mustn’t think I get the wind up, you know,’ he said, ‘if you ask me a question. You can ask me what you like, you know. And when I can tell you, I’ll tell you. I know you’d never come shoving your nose in like a rat from under the skirting board when nobody’s looking.’

  ‘Even if I seem to,’ said Somers, ironically.

  ‘No, no, you don’t seem to. And when I can tell you, I’ll do so. I know I can trust you.’

  Somers looked up wonde
ring, and met the meditative dark eyes of the other man resting on his face.

  ‘There’s some of us chaps,’ said Jack, ‘who’ve been through the war and had a lick at Paris and London, you know, who can tell a man by the smell of him, so to speak. If we can’t see the colour of his aura, we can jolly well size up the quality of it. And that’s what we go by. Call it instinct or what you like. If I like a man, slap out, at the first sight, I’d trust him into hell, I would.’

  ‘Fortunately you haven’t anything very risky to trust him with,’ laughed Somers.

  ‘I don’t know so much about that,’ said Jack. ‘When a man feels he likes a chap, and trusts him, he’s risking all he need, even by so doing. Because none of us likes to be taken in, and to have our feelings thrown back in our faces, as you may say, do we?’

  ‘We don’t,’ said Somers grimly.

  ‘No, we don’t. And you know what it means to have them thrown back in your face. And so do I. There’s a lot of the people here that I wouldn’t trust with a thank you, I wouldn’t. But then there’s some that I would. And mind you, taking all for all, I’d rather trust an Aussie, I’d rather trust an Australian than an Englishman, I would, and a lot rather. Yet there’s some of the rottenest people in Sydney that you’d find even if you sifted hell over. Rotten—absolute yellow rotten. And many of them in public positions, too. Simply white-anting society, that’s what they’re doing. Talk about public affairs in Sydney, talk about undercurrents of business in Sydney: the wickedest crew on God’s earth, bar none. All the underhanded tricks of a Chink, a blooming yellow Chinaman, and all the barefaced fair talk of an Englishman. There you are. And yet, I’m telling you, I’d rather trust even a Sydney man, and he’s a special sort of wombat, than an Englishman.’

  ‘So you’ve told me before: for my good, I suppose,’ laughed Somers, not without irony.

  ‘No, now don’t you go running away with any wrong ideas,’ said Jack, suddenly reaching out his hand and laying it on Somers’ arm. ‘I’m not hinting at anything. If I was I’d ask you to kick me out of your house. I should deserve it. No, you’re an Englishman. You’re a European, perhaps I ought to say, for you’ve lived about all over that old continent, and you’ve studied it, and you’ve got tired of it. And you’ve come to Australia. Your instinct brought you here, however much you may rebel against rats and tin cans and a few other things like that. Your instinct brought you here—and brought you straight up against me. Now that I call fate.’