The Ballad of Desmond Kale (12 page)

A matter that Dolly did not raise with her husband yet, because it was not shadowed over into becoming a fault, but might be quite underhand useful if it ever did go wrong, was the puppy love Warren had for Ivy. Dolly directed its jealousy towards Titus, looking for opportunities to inflame any feeling.

When he came looking for her, she said:

‘Where is Ivy, you ask? Oh, Warrie, I gave her a picnic to take along the creek, and sent Titus to carry the baskets for her. I am not
sure which direction they took, but if you hurry down where the old log is fallen, you might catch them before they gobble the yeast cakes.'

All the time knowing they had taken the direction of the flat rock.

AFTER MORNING PRAYERS IN ST BOTOLPH'S pit-sawn timbered chapel, Warren was given his first day's liberty to visit his mother since coming over from Aaron Tait's. Word had been sent to his mother during the week, that he was to be expected.

‘You are somewhat as good as a son,' said Stanton, farewelling Warren out of earshot of his wife. ‘For sure you'll have fine horses and flocks of your own one day, you'll be Warren Inchcape keeper of your own stud rams, broad acres and you know a farmstead with a tight shingle roof and a lick of smoke rising up from a well-made chimney place, to welcome your dear mother in, in her deserved old age, which is a long way off from her good self yet, to be sure.'

The promises sounded like Warren was the luckiest of their three; and Warren with the wind in his earth-coloured hair, cantering off on the pony Stanton allowed him, almost pitied the minister for the great generosity he bestowed, because if Stanton gave away any more he would be left begging.

As Warren trotted in to Parramatta past noon he turned his head and heard a noise of music coming through the trees — fifes and a
towrow of kettle drums. Although he was late kicking his pony to his mother's hut he followed the sound where it led.

It was a company of foot, marching to the fifes, returning from church parade in a scour of dust with a lean captain and a portly sergeant major attached to the side, the pair of them on wide swings lengthening their pace keeping tempo, shortening their snappy steps upon the inside turn. The drill held Warren rapt as the soldiers came together in closed ranks, sounding their dusty boots on the stones of the barracks' ground, every foot awaiting the order to halt and be dismissed. Watching, the boy was aware that the captain stared in his direction for moments longer than was entitled. It was as if he knew Warren, or was warned of him in some way, or just wanted to be sure the watcher understood what a fine fellow he the captain was, and what a show Warren was given by a company of redcoats, all on his own, at no cost for entertainment except the time spent.

‘That will be Captain Tom Rankine,' said Warren, ‘Ugly Tom, who fought at the battle of Ciudad Rodrigo with our old soldier, Clumpsy M'Carty, who said his bold captain was like a devil's hoof was planted in his face, from gunshot wounds, and his ears were the shape of wood fungus, from being chewed by a mastiff while being held down, not to mention from having the pox, but he was brave as any man born, and the kindest, too.'

When the troops broke off and went to their barracks, Warren sauntered along with an arm around his pony's neck. He tried keeping step with the animal, skipping his feet the way the captain corrected his nimble gait, as if being out of step was the greatest part of being in step, because then you could do something showy with your toes. He was in a dream as he went the next hundred yards, he was in the Spanish wars — those earsplitting fifes and
drums Clumpsy talked about, that roused a frightened soldier's blood, made boys into men, brass bugles sounding the charge, drifting gunpowder smoke peppered with shot like little birds whizzing over the hills. Clumpsy swore every detail in the Stantons' painting over their fireplace was faithful, except brains spattered on rocks that Clumpsy said was like scrampled eggs the Spaniards pushed in their faces.

Because of these thoughts Warren missed noticing the captain chasing up behind him, the buttons of his dress jacket undone, a hot searching look in his long twisted face when Warren swung around.

‘Warren Inchcape! Is that who you are, boy?'

‘What if I am?'

‘Have the goodness to haul up under a tree. Or are you too touched by the sun to enjoy a spell of shade?' replied the over-heated officer, who introduced himself by name and rank and shook Warren's hand. He was not as ugly as Clumpsy said, only from being pitted with the pox, and more like his character was all a matter of finer expression, with his face going up one side, down on the other, and his pale eyes like ash in the morning's fire, as he urged himself upon a person.

‘I am in a hurry to get to my mother's place,' Warren answered, puffing his chest cockalorum style. The show of inflated manliness made the officer smile, as without any ceremony he tugged Warren's horse over (and Warren obediently following) to where a large white gum tree grew its lower branches onto the ground, making benches for travellers, which they had polished with their trouser bottoms and carved with their names and marks.

Before any further explanation the officer pulled a lump of confectionery from his inside pocket, examined it for dust and grit sticking to the sugar glue, and raised his arm to smash it against the
smooth tree trunk, holding out a clean result of crumbly insides for Warren to pick through.

‘Take any piece,' he invited.

Warren did so, and the next moment his tongue was following a lump of sweetmeat around inside his cheek, causing him to reflect that a gift he had in one part of his day — Stanton's promises and praise so honestly sworn — followed him through into the rest, and there was still his mother's kitchen to be eaten up before dark. He took another piece of rock candy while he had the offer, and held it ready while eating the first.

‘Is it good, or not?'

‘Is goob,' he said, sucking until he was almost cross-eyed, extracting a smooth tarry flavour.

‘It has an imported syrup of wines and spices boiled in molasses,' said Rankine. ‘My servant made it, and I always carry a portion in my saddle bag — so that whenever we meet, Warren Inchcape, I'll have something to throw your way. The governor's wife says, when she eats my rock, that if she closes her eyes she is in Scotland still, on Princes Street, where she liked to shop for the best candy rock — except there's no writing down the middle of mine, telling us where we are. I laugh, and tell her she's more like in Spain, and the rascal who boiled her sweets can no more read than write.'

At this hint of the officer's closeness with the governor's camp Warren contracted his mouth in imitation of the crafty way the officer himself did it, because by that rather charming twist you showed you doubted something without being too unfriendly.

Any mention of the governor's camp in the Stanton household made the dogs under the table yellow their fangs, and Warren was now with those dogs on the matter, having fairly quickly acquired
Stanton's views all and some, on the politics of the colony. They were all in his feelings, but if asked, Warren would not have been able to explain what those politics were, how he fitted them, except to say that people of the convict stamp were not to be treated equal to those from birth unbranded, but always kept lower to be fair to the free. The thought made a conundrum of Warren himself, close blood relation of a hated, flogged criminal, henceforth to be raised as a cuckoo'd shepherd in a free man's habitation.

‘You have a question?' said Rankine, as he waited for a certain irresolution in the boy's face to clarify.

‘Does Clumsy M'Carty lie?' said Warren.

‘What about?' said Rankine, rather sharply as since the escape every last question thrown his way came double edged.

‘The stories he tells about you — cause if only one of them is true, you've seen some sights together.'

‘Clumpsy don't lie, except to speak better of others than he does of himself. For my part, I'm glad to be out of the wars and seeking my fortune in New South Wales.'

‘In spirits, sheep or horses would that be?' said Warren quite smartly, as it was said there were no pursuits more precious to officers than rum, flocks, and getting their mares in foal to the newest-arrived stallion from Calcutta. But if it was flocks, Warren had, like Stanton, and anybody else, never heard of a Captain Tom Rankine's having any.

Rankine gave Warren a long considering stare, wondering what he knew of Mundowey forest and the movement of pedigree flocks under the control of a difficult Irishman. He would love, in the name of love, to tell Warren everything. To test him with trust and have him pass it to Meg. To so warm Meg that way, in the absence of any other way — any more sure close warm touching way —
that they would be almost physically bonded even if they never even barely touched. The only compensation of this suspenseful courtship was in the nature of courtship itself, that it was a hopeful venture, and reduced Rankine on many days to waves of pure longing, in which he forgot himself.

Already rumour was so rich around Kale. But so mythical were the details (while staying accurately rough) that nobody believed in them as fact except the poetic believers of utterance itself. The exercise had been kept tight for almost eight and a half weeks now. In it, now, the chief actor in the affair apart from Kale was a remote station keeper with just a few particulars varying from the usual, such as that nobody must be told where his land was located, what livestock was on it, who his stock hands were, or anything else.

But when an answer came to Warren's question whether it was cattle, horses or sheep he was in, Rankine heard himself saying, for the first time to anyone outside his tightest inner circle:

‘I am in flocks. That old ram of Parson Stanton's, Young Matchless, is he a sheep to interest me?'

‘You know the one?' said Warren.

A gesture of airiness took over.

‘Yes, I may. I happened to be riding through your district and saw the said object a way off. I went over and had a feel of his jaws. He's a true English sheep the size of a small pony with shanks of choice meat and coat of coarse blanket consistency.'

‘You must be in mutton, then, if all you cares about is size and coarse wools.'

‘Nay, I'm in the other. Fleeces.'

There was a long implication in the word fleeces, that would tell Warren almost all there was to know: that Rankine was born to hang — only it was not the way it played out.

‘Would he do me, Warren Inchcape? Come on and tell me true. I want your smartest opinion, as the one who knows.'

Warren, squatting to the ground, rocked on his heels, holding the reins slack, cabbage-tree hat pulled down over his eyes, pursing his lips into the round thinking shape favoured by stock dealers as they stretched negotiations along — forgetting for the time being that Stanton was the master decider in the matters. It was Stanton who said Young Matchless was a good-to-great wool breeder, and Warren who looked at the wool and thought it was even better than that.

‘Only if you are a butcher,' said Warren importantly, ‘would you talk that way, not if you wanted him for wool.'

‘But his frame for wool is what I would want, to put over smaller ewes, and so, in time, to bring back some wonderful big rams, like Young Matchless himself, only shaken out with a good quality of fleece, as if they wore a greatcoat of long hairs, and their fibres were roosted down into their girdles all over, and thick compressed together …'

He was quoting Kale, to see the effect of the words in Warren's dreamy eyes.

‘You'd have him there,' said Warren in admiration of such a vision for a sheep, which he was afterwards to remember as a way of thinking, until somebody better taught him more. Still, it made no difference what anyone thought or wanted, because —

‘He is not for sale, that ram, not this year, nor next.'

‘I am in more of a hurry than that. I am putting flocks together for a wide move. You see, I am just at my start.'

‘I thought you might be,' said Warren, everything being suddenly explained. Rankine was playing him along. He had no stock at all. ‘Seeing as I have not heard nothing about your flocks, Captain Tom.'

‘True, they don't exist this side of paradise,' said Rankine, with shy relief over being extricated from where things stood, and not quite having to lie about it, either. ‘Only I have great hopes.'

‘All I know is that everyone nowadays is in the way of putting their flocks together, if they wear epaulettes and carry swords, because they say being a redcoat is better than working a plough, or an axe, in getting this colony covered over with livestock.'

‘Very true. Except every faction of officers has another faction against it, and each two factions are feuding up against a third which they deal with by making consuming alliances. So all they have time for is to count their head of stock, in a race of competition, and boast about numbers, without considering the advantage of the material they have, which those of a different mettle may do on the quiet, if they are so inclined.'

‘What breed of small ewes is it you want?'

‘I dream of the Spanish — so much so, that a few of the more beauteous shall have to wear black lace and dance the tarantella, and rattle chestnuts tied with string, while they go through their paces.' As he spoke, the captain shone with a curious madness in his unusually light eyes, from which Warren guessed he was not so much describing a sheep, as trying to confuse him with fancies, for whatever reasons of charm.

‘Oh, yeah, and whose flock would you get them from?' said Warren with an almost jeer, because there were only a few breeders of Spaniards known in the colony, according to Parson Stanton, and they had extremely disreputable claims to authentic blood, being Spaniards gathered from abroad via ports of call where Stanton said they had been jumped upon by rams no better than Arabian goats, and had not originated in Spain at all. There were
none
that had, scorned Stanton: but if there were, it was but one rumoured
band of them, that had been brought into the colony without being announced in the broadsheets, nor paraded in the dusty streets, nor boasted about in the grog shops, nor at officers' dinners. Nor had they been speared by blacks for which crime the natives would be made to pay with a life or two, as practised to keep the peace until sheep overran their grounds and they saw the justice of it. If so they would have been heard of, too.

‘So these are the ones you want — that don't exist,' said Warren with finality.