Kangaroo Read online

  Jaz was silent for a time, contemplating his knuckles.

  ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is how the big majority of Australians feel, and that’s why they care nothing about Australia. It’s cruel to the country.’

  ‘Anyhow, no sort of politics will help the country,’ said Somers.

  ‘If it won’t, then nothing will,’ retorted Jaz.

  ‘So you’d advise us all to be like seven-tenths of us here, not care a blooming hang about anything except your dinner and which horse gets in?’ asked Jack, not without sarcasm.

  Now Richard was silent, driven into a corner.

  ‘Why,’ he said, ‘there’s just this difference. The bulk of Australians don’t care about Australia—that is, you say they don’t. And why don’t they? Because they care about nothing at all, neither in earth below or heaven above. They just blankly don’t care about anything, and they live in defiance, a sort of slovenly defiance of care of any sort, human or inhuman, good or bad. If they’ve got one belief left, now the war’s safely over, it’s a dull, rock-bottom belief in obstinately not caring, not caring about anything. It seems to me they think it manly, the only manliness, not to care, not to think, not to attend to life at all, but just to tramp blankly on from moment to moment, and over the edge of death without caring a straw. The final manliness.’

  The other two men listened in silence, the distant colonial silence that hears the voice of the old country passionately speaking against them.

  ‘But if they’re not to care about politics, what are they to care about?’ asked Jaz, in his small, insinuating voice.

  There was a moment’s pause. Then Jack added his question:

  ‘Do you yourself really care about anything, Mr Somers?’

  Richard turned and looked him for a moment in the eyes. And then, knowing the two men were trying to corner him, he said coolly:

  ‘Why, yes. I care supremely.’

  ‘About what?’ Jack’s question was soft as a drop of water falling into water, and Richard sat struggling with himself.

  ‘That,’ he answered, ‘you either know or don’t know. And if you don’t know, it would only be words my trying to tell.’

  There was a silence of check-mate.

  ‘I’m afraid, for myself, I don’t know,’ said Jack.

  But Somers did not answer, and the talk, rather lamely, was turned off to other things.

  The two men went back to Murdoch Street rather silent, thinking their own thoughts. Jack only blurted once:

  ‘What do you make of Jaz, then?’

  ‘I like him. He lives by himself and keeps himself pretty dark—which is his nature.’

  ‘He’s a cleverer man than you’d take him for—figures things out in a way that surprises me. And he’s better than a detective for getting to know things. He’s got one or two Cornish pals down town, you see—and they tip one another the wink. They’re like the Irish in many ways. And they’re not uncommonly unlike a Chink. I always feel as if Jaz had got a bit of Chinese blood in him. That’s what makes the women like him, I suppose.’

  ‘But do the women like him?’

  ‘Rose does. I believe he’d make any woman like him, if he laid himself out to do it. Got that quiet way with him, you know, and a sly sort of touch-the-harp-gently, that’s what they like on the quiet. But he’s the sort of chap I don’t exactly fancy mixing my broth with, and drinking out of the same can with.’

  Somers laughed at the avowal of antipathy between the two men.

  They were not home till two o’clock. Somers found Harriet looking rather plaintive.

  ‘You’ve been a long time,’ she said. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Just talked.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Politics.’

  ‘And did you like them?’

  ‘Yes, quite well.’

  ‘And have you promised to see them again today?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Why, any of them—the Callcotts.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. They’re becoming rather an institution.’

  ‘You like them too?’

  ‘Yes, they’re all right. But I don’t want to spend my life with them. After all, that sort of people isn’t exactly my sort—and I thought you used to pretend it wasn’t yours.’

  ‘It isn’t. But then no sort of people is my sort.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Any sort of people, so long as they make a fuss of you.’

  ‘Surely they make an even greater fuss of you.’

  ‘Do they! It’s you they want, not me. And you go as usual, like a lamb to the slaughter.’

  ‘Baa!’ he said.

  ‘Yes, baa! You should hear yourself bleat.’

  ‘I’ll listen,’ he said.

  But Harriet was becoming discontented. They had been in their house only six weeks: and she had had enough of it. Yet it was paid for for three months: at four guineas a week. And they were pretty short of money, and would be for the rest of the year. He had already overdrawn.

  Yet she began to suggest going away: away from Sydney. She felt humiliated in that beastly little Murdoch Street.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he retorted. ‘The very look of it humiliated me. Yet you wanted it, and you said you liked it.’

  ‘I did like it—for the fun of it. But now there’s all this intimacy and neighbouring. I just can’t stand it. I just can’t.’

  ‘But you began it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t; you began it. And your beastly sweetness and gentleness with such people. I wish you kept a bit of it for me.’

  He went away in silence, knowing the uselessness of argument. And to tell the truth he was feeling also a revulsion from all this neighbouring, as Harriet called it, and all this talk. It was usually the same. He started by holding himself aloof, then gradually he let himself get mixed in, and then he had revulsions. And today was one of his revulsions. Coming home from Mosman’s Bay, he had felt himself dwindle to a cipher in Jack’s consciousness. Then, last evening, there had been all this fervour and protestation. And this morning all the cross-examination by Trewhella. And he, Somers, had plainly said all he thought. And now, as he walked home with Jack, Jack had no more use for him than for the stump of cigar which he chewed between his lips merely because he forgot to spit it away. Which state of affairs did not go at all well with our friend’s sense of self-importance.

  Therefore, when he got home, his eyes opened once more to the delicacy of Harriet’s real beauty, which he knew as none else knew it, after twelve years of marriage. And once more he realised her gay, undying courage, her wonderful fresh zest in front of life. And all these other little people seemed so common in comparison, so common. He stood still with astonishment, wondering how he could have come to betray the essential reality of his life and Harriet’s to the common use of these other people with their watchful, vulgar wills. That scene of last evening: what right had a fellow like Callcott to be saying these things to him? What right had he to put his arm round his, Richard’s, shoulder, and give him a tight hug? Somers winced to think of it. And now Callcott had gone off with his Victoria in Sunday clothes to some other outing. Anything was as good as anything else: why not!

  A gulf there was between them, really, between the Somers and the Callcotts. And yet the easy way Callcott flung a flimsy rope of intimacy across the gulf, and was embracing the pair of his neighbours in midair, as it were, without a grain of common foothold. And Somers let himself be embraced. So he sat pale and silent and mortified in the kitchen that evening thinking of it all, and wishing himself far away, in Europe.

  ‘Oh, how I detest this treacly democratic Australia,’ he said. ‘It swamps one with a sort of common emotion like treacle, and before one knows where one is, one is caught like a fly on a flypaper, in one mess with all the other buzzers. How I hate it! I want to go away.’

  ‘It isn’t Australia,’ said Harriet. ‘Australia’s lonely. It’s just the people. And it isn’t even the people—if you would o
nly keep your proper distance, and not make yourself cheap to them and get into messes.’

  ‘No, it’s the country. It’s in the air. I want to leave it.’

  But he was not very emphatic. Harriet wanted to go down to the South Coast, of which she had heard from Victoria.

  ‘Think,’ she said, ‘it must be lovely there—with the mountain behind, and steep hills, and blackberries, and lovely little bays of sand.’

  ‘There’ll be no blackberries. It’s end of June—which is their midwinter.’

  ‘But there’ll be the other things. Let’s do that, and never mind the beastly money for this pokey Torestin.’

  ‘They’ve asked us to go with them to Mullumbimby in a fortnight. Shall we wait till then and look?’

  Harriet sat in silence for some moments.

  ‘We might,’ she said reluctantly. She didn’t want to wait. But what Victoria had told her of Mullumbimby, the township on the South Coast, so appealed to her that she decided to abide by her opportunity.

  And then curiously enough, for the next week the neighbours hardly saw one another. It was as if the same wave of revulsion had passed over both sides of the fence. They had fleeting glimpses of Victoria as she went about the house. And when he could, Jack put in an hour at his garden in the evening, tidying it up finally for the winter. But the weather was bad, it rained a good deal; there were fogs in the morning, and foghorns on the harbour; and the Somers kept their doors continually blank and shut.

  Somers went round to the shipping agents and found out about boats to San Francisco, and talked of sailing in July, and of stopping at Tahiti or at Fiji on the way, and of cabling for money for the fares. He figured it all out. And Harriet mildly agreed. Her revulsion from Australia had passed quicker than his, now that she saw herself escaping from town and from neighbours to the quiet of a house by the sea, alone with him. Still she let him talk. Verbal agreement and silent opposition is perhaps the best weapon on such occasions.

  Harriet would look at him sometimes wistfully, as he sat with his brow clouded. She had a real instinctive mistrust of other people—all other people. In her heart of hearts she said she wanted to live alone with Somers, and know nobody, all the rest of her life. In Australia, where one can be lonely, and where the land almost calls to one to be lonely—and then drives one back again on one’s fellow men in a kind of frenzy. Harriet would be quite happy, by the sea, with a house and a little garden and as much space to herself as possible, knowing nobody, but having Lovat always there. And he could write, and it would be perfect.

  But he wouldn’t be happy—and he said so—and she knew it. She saw it like a doom on his brow.

  ‘And why couldn’t we be happy in this wonderful new country, living to ourselves. We could have a cow, and chickens—and then the Pacific, and this marvellous new country. Surely that is enough for any man. Why must you have more?’

  ‘Because I feel I must fight out something with mankind yet. I haven’t finished with my fellow men. I’ve got a struggle with them yet.’

  ‘But what struggle? What’s the good? What’s the point of your struggle? And what’s your struggle for?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s inside me, and I haven’t finished yet. To make some kind of an opening—some kind of a way for the afterwards.’

  ‘Ha, the afterwards will make its own way, it won’t wait for you. It’s a kind of nervous obstinacy and self-importance in you. You don’t like people. You always turn away from them and hate them. Yet like a dog to his vomit you always turn back. And it will be the same old game here again as everywhere else. What are these people after all? Quite nice, but just common and—and not in your line at all. But there you are. You stick your head into a bush like an ostrich, and think you’re doing wonders.’

  ‘I intend to move with men and get men to move with me before I die,’ he said. Then he added hastily: ‘Or at any rate I’ll try a bit longer yet. When I make up my mind that it’s really no good, I’ll go with you and we’ll live alone somewhere together, and forget the world. And in Australia too. Just like a businessman retiring. I’ll retire away from the world, and forget it. But not yet. Not till I feel I’ve finished. I’ve got to struggle with men and the world of men for a time yet. When it’s over I’ll do as you say.’

  ‘Ah, you and your men, men! What do these Callcotts and these little Trewhella people mean to you after all? Are they men? They are only something you delude yourself about. And then you’ll come a cropper, and fall back on me. Just as it always is. You fall back on me, and I’m expected to like it. I’m good enough to fall back on, when you’ve made a fool of yourself with a lot of tuppenny little people, imagining you’re doing something in the world of men. Much men there is about it. Common little street-people, that’s all.’

  He was silent. He heard all she had to say: and he knew that as far as the past went, it was all quite true. He had started off on his fiery courses: always, as she said, to fall back rather the worse for the attempt on her. She had no use at all for fiery courses and efforts with the world of men. Let all that rubbish go.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s my need to make these tries, yet. Wait till I’ve exhausted the need, and we’ll have a little place of our own and forget the world, really. I know I can do it. I could almost do it now: and here in Australia. The country appeals to me that way: to lose oneself and have done with this side of life. But wait a bit longer.’

  ‘Ah, I suppose I shall have to,’ she said recklessly. ‘You’ll have to go on making a fool of yourself till you’re tired. Wives are supposed to have to take their husbands back a little damaged and repentant from their love affairs with other women. And I’m hanged if it wouldn’t be more fun than this business of seeing you come back once more fooled from your attempts with men—the world of men, as you call it. If they were real men I wouldn’t mind. But look at your Jack Callcott. Really, and you’re supposed to have had some experience of life. “Clip in, old man!”’ She imitated Jack’s voice and manner. ‘And you stand it all and think it’s wonderful! Nay, men are too foolish for me to understand them; I give them up.’

  He laughed, realising that most of what she said was true.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I have the roots of my life with you. But I want if possible to send out a new shoot in the life of mankind—the effort man makes forever, to grow into new forms.’

  She looked at him. And somehow she wanted to cry, because he was so silly in refusing to be finally disappointed in his efforts with mankind, and yet his silliness was pathetic, in a way beautiful. But then it was so silly—she wanted to shake him.

  ‘Send out a new shoot then. Send it out. You do it in your writing already!’ she cried. ‘But getting yourself mixed up with these impudent people won’t send any shoots, don’t you think it. They’ll nip you in the bud again, as they always do.’

  He pondered this also, stubbornly, and knew it was true. But he had set his will on something, and wasn’t going to give way.

  ‘I want to do something with living people, somewhere, somehow, while I live on the earth. I write, but I write alone. And I live alone. Without any connection whatever with the rest of men.’

  ‘Don’t swank, you don’t live alone. You’ve got me there safe enough, to support you. Don’t swank to me about being alone, because it insults me, you see. I know how much alone you are, with me always there keeping you together.’

  And again he sulked and swallowed it, and obstinately held out.

  ‘Nonetheless,’ he retorted, ‘I do want to do something along with men. I am alone and cut off. As a man among men, I just have no place. I have my life with you, I know: et praeterea nihil.’

  ‘Et praeterea nihil! And what more do you want? Besides, you liar, haven’t you your writing? Isn’t that all you want, isn’t that doing all there is to be done? Men! Much men there is about them! Bah, when it comes to that, I have to be even the only man as well as the only woman.’

  ‘That’s the whole tr
ouble,’ said he bitingly.

  ‘Bah, you creature, you ought to be grateful,’ cried Harriet.

  William James arrived one morning when the Callcotts were both out, and brought a little basket of persimmons and passion-fruits for Harriet. As it happened, Somers also was out.

  ‘I remember you said you like these date-plums, Mrs Somers. Over at our place we don’t care for them, so if you like to have them you’re welcome. And these are about the last of the passionfruit, seemingly.’

  The persimmons were good big ones, of that lovely suave orange-red colour which is perhaps their chief attraction, and they were just beginning to go soft. Harriet of course was enchanted. William James came in and sat down for a few minutes, wondering what had become of Victoria. He looked round the room curiously. Harriet had, of course, arranged it to her own liking, taken away all the pictures and ornaments, hung a Tunis curtain behind the couch, stood two tall red lacquer candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and altogether given the room that air of pleasant distinction which a woman who knows how to do it finds so easy, especially if she has a few shawls and cushion-covers and bits of interesting brass or china. Harriet insisted on travelling with a few such things. She was prepared to camp in a furnished bungalow or cottage on any continent, but a few of her own things she must have about her. Also she wore a dress of Bavarian peasant stuff, very thin black woollen material, sprinkled all over with tiny pink roses with green leaves. And on her feet she had heelless sandals of plaited strips of leather, from Colombo. William James noticed every one of these things. They had a glamour like magic for him.

  ‘This is quite a pleasant room you have here,’ he said in his Cornish voice, with the alert, subtle, faintly smiling look of wonder on his face.

  ‘It isn’t bad,’ said Harriet. ‘But a bit poky.’

  ‘Poky you call it? Do you remember the little stone holes they have for rooms in those old stone Cornish cottages?’

  ‘Yes—but we had a lovely one. And the great thick granite walls and the low ceilings.’

  ‘Walls always letting the damp in, can’t keep it out, because all the chinks and spaces are just stuffed with plain earth, and a bit of mortar smeared over the outside like butter scraped on bread. Don’t I remember it! I should think I do.’