A Cry from the Dark (7 page)

As she made her way down the street, there was a shout from the little knot of teenagers she had left.

“Only thing that nancy could play would be bloody
Beet
hoven!”

“
Bate
hoven,” Betty turned and shouted, and again realized she'd done a foolish thing. If there was going to be a vendetta she knew she had to be on Hughie's side. But it would be so much better if there was no vendetta, and all she had done in the last two minutes was to harden antipathies.

She wondered how they had found out about the Beethoven afternoon, but it turned out to be quite simple. When Mrs. Naismyth had gone over with the English-style egg custard to the Cheveley's house at Wilgandra she had not seen the invalid but had given it to the full-time cook and housemaid who had been so necessary since Mrs. Cheveley's health had failed. This was the mother of Steve Drayton, wife of Kevin the stockman, whom the new manager had taken against, so conversation was inevitably short and stilted. In the course of it Mrs. Naismyth had said that her son and Betty Whitelaw had got together “and were playing Beethoven, would you believe it?” It was a remark somewhere between a boast and an apology. Mrs. Naismyth was a woman who was never sure of herself, her values, or her place in the scheme of things. The remark was reported later to the Draytons, father and son, and thence circulated around Wilgandra, and was carried into Bundaroo.

When she saw her mother leaving the weatherboard vicarage, Betty went over and took charge of Oliver.

“Dad's on the way to Walgett,” she said, and her mother nodded.

“The poor lady needs anything that could bring her relief, so I'm told,” said her mother.

“Oh, Betty, I've got something for you,” said the Reverend Potter-Clowes, taking a sheet of exercise book from his pocket. “The competition was in this week's
Bulletin.
I'm an awfully slow reader, because I sometimes get ideas for sermons from it—”

“I know,” said Betty.

“I'm sure you do! I couldn't keep anything like that from a sharp girl like you. Anyway, I've copied it all out, and you can really get thinking.”

As they walked back through Bundaroo and out toward home, Betty noted that the Naismyths had arrived, probably driven by one of the stockmen in his old jalopy (Paul Naismyth had talked about getting his own car since he arrived, but had not yet done so). Paul was shopping with his wife, perhaps because he realized he wouldn't be made welcome at Grafton's, or possibly from a sense that officers didn't mix socially with the other ranks. He had a lot to learn about Australian democracy, which in the outback was real, and more than skin-deep. Paul Naismyth, however, did not talk or act like a learner.

As they walked past Bob's Café, Betty saw that the little knot of her schoolmates had been joined by Hughie. They weren't ignoring him, but whenever he spoke they looked him in the eye and didn't respond. It was a technique she knew very well. She sometimes thought she knew everything there was to know about Bundaroo. Quite soon she was to realize that her knowledge was as skin-deep as Paul Naismyth's understanding of Australian democracy.

 

The topic of Bundaroo and the
Bulletin
competition came up the next night when she, Oliver, and Sylvia went to the concert of classical pops at the Royal Albert Hall. She knew the Hall was the attraction, so she suggested that they meet in the bar half an hour before the concert was due to begin, so that if they felt like it they could do a bit of walking around before the music started.

“Beethoven's
Leonore
number three,” said Sylvia, looking at the program. “At least I know that. And then there's the
Elvira Madigan
concerto.”

“Betty was famous in Bundaroo for playing Beethoven—on the gramophone, that is—with her friend Hughie,” said Oliver. “It was part of the local folklore after she was gone.”

“I don't see anything outrageous or contradictory in that,” said Bettina. “I see Bundaroo, or at least the country around it, as spare—rather grand and terrible. Not unlike.”

“That wasn't quite how you saw it in the
Bulletin
piece,” said Sylvia. Bettina shot her a glance.

“Good heavens! You haven't gone rummaging around in libraries to find that, have you?”

Sylvia smiled, and nodded her head in Ollie's direction.

“A family heirloom,” he said. “We got it when Dad died. It was much-thumbed even then. He showed it around a lot.”

“Of course, Dad would. We were given five copies, along with the prize—the little silver cup, I mean. The
real
prize was a hundred pounds and the trip to Sydney. I've still got one of the copies. Mum and Dad had one, and so did the Cheveleys and the vicar. That just left one, and I gave it to Auntie Shirley in Armidale. I was living with her by then, and she made sure I was practically a local celebrity.”

“But in the piece you concentrated on the narrowness—how limiting the place was,” insisted Sylvia.

“I dealt with it, but I covered it up pretty well. You're sharp to see how important it was. If I'd plugged it too hard I would never have won first prize. I had to balance it with a lot of stuff about the closeness of the people, the sense of community, the church and school pulling the place together, the monotonous grandeur of the landscape. The narrowness of people's horizons was a very minor part of the piece as far as space went. I was going all out for that prize.”

“You knew even then you were that good?” asked Ollie.

“I knew I had to get away,” said Bettina. She might have elaborated on that, but suddenly she said, “Good Lord! Speaking of my Bundaroo past!”

Her companions looked toward the other end of the bar where Hughie, his wife by his side, was coping with two gray-haired ladies. Bettina knew fans when she saw them, and these had obviously bearded Hughie, determined to tell him how much they'd enjoyed his television series,
The Rise of the Modern,
now all of twelve years old, and dating back to the time when television took its educational role seriously. Hughie's wife, Marie, immaculate in her blonde perfection like a Hitchcock heroine targeted by birds, stood resolutely beside him, her smile fixed in place as implacably as each strand of hair. After a minute or two the fans backed apologetically away, and Hughie turned in their direction, raised his hand to them, then, seeing in Bettina's face permission, edged his way over, followed by the determined Marie.

“Hello, Bettina. This must be Oliver. I remember you when you were just a dirty face and sticky fingers. I'm Eugene Naismyth—Hughie—this is my wife, Marie. And you must be Sylvia Easton. We haven't met, but it's good to see you over here. Did you have a good flight?
Is
there such a thing as a good flight from Australia to Britain, I wonder?”

“I've only known two,” said Oliver. “All I know is, I prefer it with a stopover.”

“True. But how ghastly you feel when you have to get on the plane again
after
the stopover. Marie knows. We go to Australia regularly, and it gets worse and worse each time—one other symptom of aging.”

“Do you have relatives there?” asked Ollie.

“No, no. I'm a sort of ambassador in this country for Australian art—an expert, if the truth be known, who knows
rather
more than some of the specialists back there. I go back regularly to make sure I keep up with the art scene.”

“I don't suppose there was much of an art scene when you and Bettina were going to school in Bundaroo, was there?” asked Sylvia.

“Oh, definitely a burgeoning one,” said Hughie. “I'd been in Melbourne and noticed it. I thought I was the expert because I knew more about it than anyone in Bundaroo, which was a very
small
degree of self-praise. Anyway, I nurtured Bettina's taste.”

“Oh dear, don't let's go back into prehistory,” sighed Marie Naismyth. Her speciality was calculated rudeness. “You know, all Hughie's wives have had to live with Bettina as a third in the bed.”

“Metaphorically speaking,” said Hughie, covering up for her rudeness. “Our friendship has always been exclusively aesthetic.”

“Too right,” said Bettina.

She had been aware over the past two days that her accent was regaining some of its old Australian overtones, and now she exaggerated them deliberately. Hughie, on the other hand, who owed some of his television popularity to the cut-glass enunciation of old-fashioned upper-class usages, had put on his most dated and precious tones to welcome the newcomers. Bettina wondered how far both developments were deliberate, how far unconscious. They were interrupted by the sound of the bell.

“Here we go for popular culture,” said Hughie.

“Oh dear,” said Bettina, “I was intending to take them around the building before the concert, and now there won't be time.”

“If you would like a tour of this great monument to Victorian uxoriousness,” said Hughie, “you can have one in the interval with a moderately well-qualified guide.”

“Oh yes—yes, please,” said Ollie and Sylvia, as they moved toward the auditorium. Bettina was pleased to get out of that chore, because really she knew very little about Victorian architecture, and she had other things on her mind. She pulled Sylvia back.

“How is Mark facing his disgrace?” she asked ironically.

“Disgrace? He seems quite unaware of any. He just says ‘All in a day's work' and grins. I'm still trying to work out what that's supposed to mean.”

The concert proved more to Bettina's taste than she'd expected, with a performance of the Mozart by a young Norwegian pianist that was a revelation. But in the second half, full of familiar and bouncy short pieces, she wondered about Hughie's unexpected appearance. She had told him on the phone all the things that they were booked for. Most of them were for long-running shows, or, as at Covent Garden, part of a series of performances. The concert was the only ticket they had that was a one-off, the one thing where Hughie could be sure of meeting Oliver and Sylvia.

One thing Bettina was sure of: the last sort of cultural event that Hughie would normally wish to be seen at was an Albert Hall concert of classical lollipops.

The audience at
Tosca
was predictably “brilliant,” which meant in Bettina's view well-heeled, either by inheritance, the sweat of their brows, or via some infernal financial nous that she could not begin to understand. There were faces that she knew in the foyer and crush bar, people she could flap a brief greeting to, but she thought Oliver and Sylvia would be happiest just looking rather than being introduced, so they found themselves a space and contentedly sipped their drinks. Sylvia certainly observed the dresses with a clinical, appraising eye, suggesting not that she would ever dress like that herself, but that she was glad to know that this was what people did wear these days to smart events in London.

“It's good to have seen an audience like this,” she murmured.

“Once,” said Bettina.

Their seats were not of the grandest, being in the amphitheater stalls, but four of them had set Bettina back more than she cared to think about. She wasn't mean, but she did like to feel she had got value for her money. What was the point of subsidizing a theater for the superbly well-heeled, she wondered, conscious that she would be accounted by many as one of that company herself. Clare slipped into her seat beside them only as the lights were going down, so there was no chance of doing more than making muttered introductions.

The first act got into its stride quickly, and Bettina was glad it was an old, traditional production with monumental sets and a tenor of the stand-and-deliver persuasion—delivering, indeed, rather more, in the form of long high notes, than Puccini had stipulated. Then Tosca arrived, jealous and demanding, and the temperature rose. Ollie sat forward in his seat, and Sylvia stiffened into renewed attention. By the time the act ended they were so involved that Bettina wondered they could forbear from booing Scarpia.

They collected the drinks they had ordered and found a corner of the crush bar where they could watch and listen as well as talk.

“Are you enjoying your stay?” Clare asked Sylvia. Bettina was interested that she couldn't quite keep the note of metropolitan condescension out of her voice.

“So far very much. Everything so new and unusual.”

“We're enjoying this tremendously,” said Oliver. “I gather that we've got you to thank for getting the tickets.” Clare gave a wave of dismissal.

“All part of the service.”

“I'm sure it's
not.
”

“For some authors,” amended Clare.

“I know one can't expect it to be in English, with international stars,” said Sylvia, “but I wish I knew
exactly
what was being said at each point.”

“The theory is that you study the libretto in advance,” said Clare.

“But if I did it thoroughly, I'd have to do it listening to discs of the music, and by the time I was
really
well-prepared I'd know the opera so well that it would have lost some of its impact,” said Sylvia.

“You're quite right,” said Bettina. “Audiences these days don't want to
follow
the action, they just want to
wallow
in the music, with a vague idea of what's going on. And that suits the singers, who don't have to bother about getting the words across. They should be having that audience agog with the ‘what happens next?' excitement. They've got it wrong, you've got it right.”

It was the first time she had expressed even implied praise or fellow-feeling for her daughter. Sylvia flushed with surprise, and to cover the embarrassment of the moment Clare said, “And where else are you going while you're over here?”

“We hadn't thought of anywhere else but London when we were planning the trip,” said Ollie. “But now we've been wondering whether we couldn't slip in a few days in Edinburgh.”

This was news, and rather enticing news, to Bettina.

“Edinburgh in April!” she said. “It could be lovely, depending on the weather. Much nicer anyway than Edinburgh in Festival time, though of course there won't be as much to do.”

“Do you know Edinburgh well?” asked Sylvia.

“Once upon a time I went there fairly often. Now, I'm afraid, it's many years since I was there. The usual thing: old age.”

“Why don't you come with us—if we can fit in the trip with all the theater and concert tickets.”

“The tickets can be changed, or ignored,” said Bettina firmly.

“Then you'll come?”

“I'm very tempted…But would you two want an old person with you? One who keeps having to cry off things and go back to her hotel to rest?”

“Why should we mind?” said Ollie. “We're old people ourselves. And if we do stand the pace, you can cry off: you get your rest and we plow on doing the sights.”

When the bell went and they all began to troop back downstairs, Sylvia and Oliver in front, Clare whispered to Bettina, “If you are going to traipse off to Edinburgh, make sure I have all you've dictated of the book before you go.”

Bettina looked at her, bewildered, then laughed. “I'm afraid I've passed on some of Hughie's paranoia to you, Clare. Why on earth should I be under any sort of threat?”

Clare didn't answer, but gestured toward Ollie and Sylvia. Bettina felt something like anger rise in her, in spite of her long friendship with Clare.

As they were sitting down, Bettina bent across over Ollie and said to Sylvia, “You're quite right about translation. It's the only way to really get the impact of anopera. Verdi refused to let the Paris Opera give the premiere of
Otello
in Italian. He knew it had to be in French to make its proper effect.”

She was not making a contribution to the age-old debate about the proper language for opera performances. She was making, for Clare's benefit, a gesture of solidarity with her daughter.

She had a long history of making gestures of solidarity.

 

As November advanced, the heat in Bundaroo began to assume its fierce summer glare. For some it was welcome. For others it was feared—Betty and Hughie among them. From early in the day armpits and the small of the back became itchy in the dry heat. All visible skin began to reassume the tan or the raw red of the previous summer. Tempers were frayed. Little things began to assume ridiculous importance, irritations festered and became grudges. It was summer again—the summer when Betty would leave school.

As Bundaroo High moved toward Christmas and the end-of-year Leaving exams, feeling against Hughie crystallized. It wasn't so much what was said—in fact an absolute minimum was said
to
him, and he wasn't much discussed when he wasn't there. The youngsters didn't need to discuss him, because they knew what they thought about him. Their collective judgment was formed from a variety of impulses and time-honored reactions, but the main ones were the feeling that he was
different,
and was not making an effort to prove otherwise. Hughie was also affected by the wider feeling in the community that Paul Naismyth was a no-hoper posing as an efficient leader and manager, a man whose engagement had been one of Bill Cheveley's few mistakes, one who would be taking the road to Sydney or Melbourne and the boat back to England before many months were over. That second judgment, at its most extreme, shaded off into the view that Naismyth was a smooth-talking crook. As often happens in schools, Hughie suffered for the reputation of his parents.

Nobody, not even Betty, was quite sure how he was affected by the general hostility and contempt. Hughie walked nonchalantly to and from school, apparently quite unconcerned if he had no one of his own age to talk to. He made friends with the vicar, who was always happy to have some intelligent conversation, and he discussed art with Miss Dampier. The latter's essay topic on “Oh, to Be in England” had resulted in special praise for Hughie's effort, which in its turn led to muttering about his unfair advantage. Miss Dampier had tried to neutralize this by a follow-up topic on what pupils would choose to regret if they were away from Australia, what they would remember and long to experience again. Miss Dampier had long been frustrated by the fact that syllabuses for New South Wales schools dealt entirely with English history and English literature, with barely a nod to the nationality of most of the pupils. Hughie didn't help matters, though, by muttering “endless mutton and the dunnee man calling” as she was elaborating her theme. Miss Dampier diagnosed a boy who was terribly unsure of himself, and who felt the need to make periodic aggressive gestures.

Hughie's best friend, however, was at this point Mr. Blackfeller, also known as Alfred, and by an aboriginal name no one could attempt to pronounce. He was generally genial, though a man of few words, and when Hughie went to talk to him after school and look at his pictures, the visits mostly consisted of them both sitting contentedly together in the little patch of garden in front of his shack while Mr. Blackfeller smoked his pipe and uttered the occasional monosyllable.

The gift of Mr. Blackfeller which brought him most local recognition was not his painting but his prophecies. These prophecies (which, perhaps fortunately, were never about people, always about greater events) were passed around in Bundaroo and the nearby townships, generally scoffed at, but—if not believed—widely
registered,
referred to, kept in the back of people's minds.

“Mr. Blackfeller says we've got a big drought coming,” said Betty's mother one day over breakfast. Jack Whitelaw's cup went down with a crash on his saucer.

“Bloody hell, Dot, you don't believe that flaming con man, do you?” Jack Whitelaw's language always became stronger when a nerve had been touched.

“Oh, I don't know—”

“He'll say anything for sixpence. It's just made up, like those trashy romantic books you read.”

“Well, if he's saying there's going to be a drought he's not telling people what they want to hear, that's for sure.”

The justice of that had to be admitted.

“Too right. He'll not get many sixpences in his palm for forecasting a drought in this neck of the woods.”

“Anyway, everyone says he foretold the Great War.”

Jack slapped his knife across his plate. He never liked people talking about the Great War.

“Oh yes? And what's he supposed to have said? ‘Great storm cover whole world.' ”

“Well, it did, didn't it?”

“He could have been talking about another Great Flood. If people had believed him they'd have gone away and started building themselves flaming arks! Bloody hell, Dot, I'd've expected a bit more sense from you…What's he said?”

“Something about a great thirst on the way.”

“There's one of those every Saturday in Grafton's.”

“He's a clever fellow,” protested Dot.

“Oh, he's that all right.”

Mr. Blackfeller presumably did not fill Hughie's head with his Cassandra-like prophecies. Hughie had read a book on Nostradamus. He said the prophecies of that sage were so vague you had to be downright cracked to believe them. Hughie just sat there with him, telling him things now and then (Mr. Blackfeller liked information), and sometimes being invited into his shack to see his latest paintings aimed at the Sydney market, and other more private ones that Hughie found much more interesting.

“He's got those ones that he does and sends to Sydney and Melbourne. Dealers of some kind there give him a few quid for them—it's a market, and he knows what they want,” Hughie explained to Betty. “But he's got these others, ones he keeps in an old cardboard box, and those are the real thing—strange, abstractlike pictures: not much color, and they seem at first to be just patterns, and then he points out things—the moon, trees, stones, a snake. The ones he sells are quite good in their way, but the ones for himself are wonderful.”

“Would he show them to me?” asked Betty.

“I don't know. This is for your article, I suppose?” Hughie sometimes spoke of her article as if he was jealous of it. “He might show them to you if you came to see him with me. The sad thing is, though, that the ones he values himself are the ones he can sell to Sydney and Melbourne. He doesn't think anything of the real stuff. My dad gave me five pounds for my birthday and I bought three of them for that—he wanted to give them to me and not take any money, but I insisted he take it. The other ones may gain in value—no one's giving their money away if they buy them. But it's the strange ones that will be really valuable in fifty years' time.”

Betty couldn't think in terms of fifty years, though if anyone had told her that in fifty years' time she would be an esteemed novelist living in London she would probably have thought that life was going to give her everything she had ever dreamed of. She said, “How can you know what they'll be worth in fifty years' time?”

Hughie shrugged.

“Twenty, maybe thirty. It all depends on when Australians wake up to what Australia really is.”

Betty had this in common with her schoolmates: she didn't like Hughie assuming, with Pommie over-confidence, that he knew what Australia really was. She certainly didn't feel Hughie was one she needed to talk to as she meditated on her article for the
Bulletin
competition, which could account for the tone of voice he assumed when speaking about it. He was still one of her best friends, and she was still his only one, but as she got possessed by her subject he got sidelined in her life, and she hoped (without worrying too much about it) that he could get all the companionship he needed from his adult friends, more suitable matches for his sophistication. Betty wildly exaggerated in her mind the sophistication of a Northumberland farming community and had no idea how Hughie's apparent cultivation and worldly wisdom had been patiently gleaned and put together from the wireless, from such newspapers as he could pick up, and from any relations, neighbors, and friends of his parents who might drop a relevant crumb in his path.