Siddon Rock (18 page)

 

ON HER DAILY WALK
Catalin passed all houses of worship in the town: the solid-looking Roman Catholic church that stood, squarely dark-brick, within a gravelled yard; the Church of England with its stained glass and frills of flowers and shrubs at the walls; and the small, weatherboard Methodist church that, although the first place of worship in the town, seemed neglected and in need of a good coat of paint.

Gloria Aberline and Martha Hinks stopped Catalin one day and invited her to attend a service at the Methodist church. Catalin smiled her most charming smile and said,
Thank you so much, but it is not possible.

They must be Catholic
, Martha Hinks muttered as they walked on.

The words may not have been exactly the same when the Roman Catholic priest called on Catalin at the hospital; nor when the vicar from the Church of England stopped her as they passed in Wickton Street one afternoon. But the
message was clear: Catalin and Jos Morningstar did not attend any church.

Instead, Catalin took Jos to places that, she told him,
are much more spiritual than words written in a book by men.
Whenever it was possible – that is, when there were no patients in the hospital to cook for – on a Sunday they went either to the rock, where Jos would chase clouds of brown moths from the dark gullies where they hid from the light, or to the salt lake. Jos preferred the lake. He delighted in the fragile-looking dragonflies that skimmed the surface of the still water, and jumped away and laughed as pieces of stick transformed into gangly insects that moved awkwardly as they tried to keep the shape and colouration of the dead twigs they clung to. Not even the swarms of small bush flies worried him, although Catalin would sit in the shade waving a piece of paper or her hat to keep them away. Catalin relished these times for their quiet peacefulness.

This is such a different place
, Catalin told Jos one Sunday.
We must get to know it, not just like this –
she waved her arm, indicating the town hidden by the rock behind them and the space that opened up across the salt lake to the inland –
but here, too –
she tapped herself over the heart, and then touched Jos on the head.
But it takes time, much time, although there is much time here, waiting to be used.

Nell was eclectic in her Sunday morning routine. This started with her leaning against the brick wall of the
Catholic church as early mass was said, and she found a sort of bliss as the droning chants touched something within her that she couldn't quite remember. Then she went to Anglican morning prayer, which was, she felt, so similar to the Catholic sound that she sometimes wondered why the two mobs didn't sing together. Whichever one it was, she would shuffle the dust as she moved to the priest's or vicar's plainsong.

By the time the Anglicans received the benediction, the Methodists' service in the shabby weatherboard building around the corner was usually halfway through, so Nell had to sit out the end of the sermon. But she didn't mind the wait as she particularly enjoyed the complicated harmonies of the hymns, and often added a counter rhythm with two sticks tapped together.
Rock of ages, cleft for me,
she'd hum as she climbed the track past the silo and over the rock to her hut,
let me hide myself in thee.

For these last several Sundays Nell found, as she sat on the step leading into the tiny vestibule of the Methodist church, that while she liked the hymns it was the sound of the sermons that held her attention. And apparently most of the congregation enjoyed them too, although it needs to be remembered that at the time this particular body of Christ numbered just some twenty-nine souls, if one counted the lapsers of the Aberline clan who rarely attended.

Good sermon today, Mister Butow. You should put them in a book
, they'd say as hands were shaken and good wishes for the coming week murmured.
Making us
think, that's what you're doing.
Or
Like the Bible sections you're using, Butow. Ecclesiasticus today, wasn't it?
And
Particularly liked today's burst, Siggy.

Nell, out of sight of the departing Methodists, laughed to herself. She too
liked today's burst
, and thought that the Reverend Siggy Butow had these people fooled. The sound in his voice was just like that in the voice of Matron Sullivan before she died.
This man's voice
, she said to her dogs walking with her,
this old man's voice is telling them: You poor dumb people, waddya know about anything. Here, I'll tell you about it. Then you'll know.

Near her shack Nell sat in the sparse shade of a clump of mallee and recalled the sermon, and she talked to her dingoes about the numbers of
today's burst:
13, 15 and 17.
Nice shape
, Nell said to a dog panting at her side. She knew well the Bible quote, the mission school had made sure of that. This is what she remembered, and what she heard at the beginning of the sermon:

Every beast loveth his like, and every man loveth his neighbour. All flesh consorteth according to kind, and a man will cleave to his like. What fellowship hath the wolf with the lamb?
What indeed. Nell roared with laughter until the dogs slunk away into the bush. She knew what these people thought this Mister Butow was telling them. They thought, and she laughed again, they thought that
they
were the lambs. But she, Nell, knew different. A picture of the late Matron Sullivan came to mind.
These people, these baby people, they think that my people are the wolves
. And the idea set her off into another paroxysm of mirth.

Then she remembered another service she had heard last month, when Abe Simmons and his wife stood at the front of the church holding their infant son, to name him in the sight of their god. This Mister Butow had no softness in his voice when he looked at the child, indeed his voice seemed louder and more emphatic than usual.
A firstborn bull
, he roared,
majesty is his! His horns are the horns of a wild ox; with them he gores the peoples, driving them to the ends of the earth.

Searching among her memories from the mission school she found the right numbers: 33 and 17. It took a bit longer to find the name attached to the numbers, but eventually she did, the hard one to say,
Deuteronomy
.

Nell's laughing stopped and the dogs came back, tentatively sniffing the air around her.
How come this Mister Butow don't see that you can't be a lamb and a bull at the same time?
she said to them.
It's just too hard to try to think like those people.

Later she told this to Granna, who said,
Those people, they think that putting the stories on a piece of paper makes 'em theirs, as if they won't ever change.

That night Nell lit a small fire outside her hut and, when it was burning well, dropped some eucalyptus leaves onto it so that healing smoke drifted around her campsite and through the hut. Then she and the dogs slept.

Sybil Barber knew that Kelpie Crush was a tender and gentle cook. In her shop he always asked for lamb, or veal if it was
in season.
Young and tender is how I like things
, he'd say regularly, as if this was a private joke between them. When she asked him what he did for the other ingredients – the Siddon Rock Farmers' Co-op being long on bags of sugar and flour but short on French herbs and spices – he said,
It's amazing what can be substituted. I just make it up as I go along.
After a while Sybil made a point of having a choice cut for him, or a fine chicken from one of the local farmers, when she thought she knew his tastes.

Kelpie, who rarely slept, sometimes cooked at night. Marge Redall would open the fridge to get eggs for breakfast, to find containers of food she was unable to name. Kelpie once offered her his French cuisine magazines, saying that there were some good recipes, but she waved them away.
Hey, Kelp,
she said,
if I started giving that mucky-looking stuff to the blokes in the bar I may as well shut up shop.

On Sunday morning, when the pub was closed, Kelpie did most of his cooking and thinking. This particular Sunday, after he'd put the
coq au vin
in the oven and cleaned up the kitchen, he sat in the Strangers' Room with a small bourbon and soda, thinking about the Siddon Rock Cub Scouts Pack in general, and about young Jos Morningstar.

There was something vulnerable about young Jos, a softness and sweetness not seen in the tougher boys who had grown in the heat of the inland. He had first seen this in the kitchen on the evening that Harry Best met Catalin Morningstar, the night Catalin's laugh stunned the bar-leaners into silence and made her a person to be desired. The idea of Jos's gentle quality made Kelpie Crush smile, then pause
and wonder if it would survive the heat generated by the boys in the pack, if he was to join.
A bit like trying to grow French tarragon in the outback
, he thought.
Some things just need more nurturing than others.

As he ladled chicken and wine sauce into a bowl, Kelpie again saw the young boy at the table, holding his soup spoon in a manner that could never be natural to the boys of Siddon Rock, and decided then and there that he would invite Jos to join the pack even though he was younger than the official acceptance age. And he would take extra-special care of him, nurturing him so that he did not get too bruised and battered.

Here is a small part of the story of Kelpie Crush. A fragment of the things he held hidden in a locked room of his mind.

Kelpie's father, Garfield Crush, was what was once known as
a hard man
, meaning that he
took no lip from no-one.
This is what Kelpie remembered of the man who appeared to the child as a mountain among men: that he moved like a king among the rubbish-bins and low-life of the back-alleys of the capital. And no-one, not even the local coppers, ever
gave him lip.
He remembered, too – when he mounted the collection of moths and insects into likely seeming categories – a moment that was crystallised like amber in his memory. So clear it was, that he could feel the heat of the city evening through his shirt, and the smell and crunch of dry summer grass at the verge of the road. He saw the gigantic hands of Garfield catch a tiny white butterfly
and drop it into his, Robert's, own hands and he felt the fluttering panic of the insect on the soft skin of his palms, and started to smile at the tickle of its wings.

Feel the life
, Garfield said.
Feel the power in such a little thing.
Then he banged his hands against Kelpie's, smashing the butterfly between the child's palms.
That's the power we have to have
, Garfield said.
Ya gotta be the boss, otherwise ya get lip.