Ultima Thule (34 page)

Mamma, she didn't leave things behind . . . what she wanted. When Bridget fetched down from the top of the wardrobe those dirty old cork-boards with butterflies pinned to them -- most of them had got their wings knocked off them now -- and old glass boxes with bits of stone in them, and dead flowers, and asked Mamma what to do with all this rubbish, Mamma said, give them here, and how she wouldn't part with them not for anything in the world. And he said, then he didn't see why he couldn't take his horse; and Mamma was cross, and said little boys didn't know everything, but when he was as old as she was he'd understand. But he did now: it was because they were Papa's. And when he said so, she sat back on her legs and went very red, and looked angry at him, and said: "What in the name of fortune is all this fuss for about that wretched animal? You know you hardly ever ride it now! It's too small."

"I don't care . . . it's mine!"

"Well, I think that's a very selfish way of looking at it. -- Besides where we're going, if we arrive with big, expensive toys, people will think we've come there under false pretences."

"And then?"

"Then we might be turned out."

Cuffy paled. "Is that because it's going to be a post office?"

"Yes. And now I hope you'll leave off pestering."

The day the oxshun was, millions of people walked about the house just as if it was theirs. He and Luce went to Granny's; and Pauline took them for a bathe and let them stop in till his teeth trembled. But a few days after they had to get up again in the middle of the night, and a buggy came to the door and Mamma and Papa got in, and all their trunks and portmanteaux, and drove to the pier. A funny little steamer was there to take them to Melbourne, and it was pitch dark; they had to go on board with a lantern. And they sat in a teeny-weeny saloon that was the shape of a heart, with one lamp hanging in the middle; and it was so dark you could hardly see your faces. And there was nobody else. Luce went to sleep; and Mamma was sick; but in between, when she felt better, she tried to pull the rug up round Papa -- it would slip off. . . she was always very kind to Papa now. But Papa was angry. He said: "I don't like this, Mary; it's not what I've been accustomed to. There's something hole-and-corner about it." And she patted his hand: "But so nice and private, dear. We've got it all to ourselves." But Papa went on talking about who he was, and the kind of ships he'd travelled in, till Mamma told him how cheap it was, and what a lot of money it was going to save her. And then he began to cry, and cried and cried -- and the captain (Mamma said) came in and looked at him -- till he went to sleep. But he couldn't sleep. He'd always thought, even if they had to go away, there would be the beautiful steamer to sail on, with a big deck, and lots of people, and the band playing. Now he knew, because of Papa they weren't good enough for big steamers any more. And it seemed just hours he lay and watched the lamp swing, and listened to Mamma being sick, and the waves making a noise on the sides; and always more strange men -- sailors and things -- came in and pretended to be busy. But he believed just so they could take a good look at Papa, who was asleep now, with his head hanging down and his mouth wide open, making funny noises . . . not like a grown-up gentleman any more.

THEIR final destination was a place called Gymgurra in the Western District, some two hundred miles from Melbourne; to be reached either by a night's sea voyage -- round Cape Otway and along the wild coast -- or by a combined train and coach journey. With the ordeal of "taking over charge" before her, Mary dared not risk the physical upset of a voyage. So at Colac she got out of the train and into the mail coach, to lumber, the night through, over the ruts and jolts of bush roads, Lucie a dead weight on her lap, Cuffy lying heavily up against her.

There were only the three of them; Richard had had to be left behind. It had torn her heart to part from him, to hand him over to strangers but not only Bowes-Smith, every one she consulted had advised against the fatigues of the journey for him in his present state. So she had yielded -- and not for his sake alone. In the beginning she would need to give her whole mind to her new work. Richard would be better looked after where he was. Thanks to Bowes-Smith, she had managed to get him into a kind of private hospital, where he would live in comfort under a doctor's eye.

At Toorak, the place was, standing in its own beautiful grounds: there were shrubberies and summer-houses, a croquet-lawn, a bowling-green, fruit and flower-gardens; the mere sight of which had a good effect on Richard. He brightened up, carried himself more erectly -- even gave himself proprietary airs as they walked together through the gardens. None the less, when the time for parting came he wept bitterly, clinging like a child to her skirts. She had to romance about how soon she was coming back to fetch him: all the doctor thought it wise for him to be told, in the meanwhile, was that she was travelling on ahead to set the new house in order: he surely remembered how he hated the bother and confusion of moving? And by now he was too deeply sunk in himself to put awkward questions. Not once, since his attack, had he troubled his head about ways and means, or where to-morrow's dinner was to come from. It was pitiable to see; and yet . . . she couldn't find it in her heart to grudge him the peace and content this indifference brought him. The doctors called it euphoria.

The one thing he did ask, again like a timid child, was: "Mary, it's not that place . . . that other place, Mary. . . the one with the whistle. . . and the. . . the . . . the canal, we're going back to, is it?"

"No, no, dear, indeed it's not! It's somewhere quite new; where there'll be all sorts of fresh things for you to see and do. And till then, Richard, think how comfortable you're going to be here. Your own room, your own books; and this armchair by the window, so that you can sit and look out at the flowers, and watch the croquet, and see all that happens."

But something else still wormed in him. "Who will -- Mary, will you . . . will they let me . . . clean . . . clean collars, Mary . . . and those other things . . . hankchiefs?"

Here one had a glimpse of the old Richard, with his fastidious bodily habits. Mary got a frog in her throat over it. But she answered sturdily enough: "Of course, they will. As many as you like. And be sure, my darling, if there's anything you don't feel quite happy about, let me know, and I'll have it put right at once."

As indeed there should be no difficulty in doing, considering what she was paying. Though this, again thanks to Bowes-Smith -- and the fact of Richard being a medical man -- was only the half of what was charged an ordinary patient: five guineas a week instead of ten. Even so, it was a desperately heavy drain. She had put by as much as she dared towards it -- seventy pounds -- from the sale of the furniture, so in the meantime he was safe. When this was gone, she could but hope and pray he would be well enough to come home.

Out of what remained of the auction money, together with Richard's deposit and her own small savings, she had at once paid off a quarter's rent on each of the houses. Neither was yet due . . . and when Sir Jake heard what she had done, he rather called her over the coals for so unbusiness-like a proceeding. But he didn't know -- how could he? -- the load it took from her mind to know these things settled. With her, in the coach, she carried three little packets of notes, two of which, screwed up in old pieces of newspaper and tied securely and privately to her body, were towards the next quarter again. The third lay in her sealskin handbag, and was for the expenses of the journey and the purchasing of a few sticks of furniture. It had been a sad blow to learn that the salary attached to the Gymgurra post office was only eighty pounds a year. Eighty pounds! Could she and the children possibly live on that? And what, when Richard came too? Of course there was always a chance the house at Shortlands might find a tenant -- houses were so scarce there -- even though the summer was by now half over. In which case she would be some pounds to the good. Jerry, too, in whose hands she had left the affair of the perished documents, did not despair of retrieving something from the general ruin. But herself add a single penny to her income she could not; as a Government servant her hands were tied.

Over these reckonings the night wore away. (It would be money, always money now she supposed, to the bitter end.) Still, she did not fail to send a warm thought back to the dear friends who had stood by her in her trouble. The Devines had not only housed them all, but had called in their own medical man to Richard, had helped her to make arrangements at the hospital, to interview doctor and matron. Lady Devine, too -- notwithstanding her corpulence -- had promised to visit Richard weekly and report on his progress. Old Sir Jake, with her hand in both of his, had gone as near as he dared towards offering her a substantial loan. Mr. Henry had driven out to tell her that Mr. Vibert, the Deputy P.M.G., was in receipt of special instructions with regard to her case; while the postmaster at the nearest town of any size to Gymgurra had orders to give her what help she needed. More, said he, the house at Gymgurra had been enlarged by three rooms. Then dear old Tilly had travelled down from Ballarat to see her; Jerry come all the way from Wangaratta. Not to speak of many a kindness shewn her by less intimate acquaintances. -- And yet, in spite of this, Mary felt that she was seeing more than one of them for the last time. Still was she Mrs. Townshend-Mahony, the one-time member of Melbourne society. From now on, as plain Mrs. Mahony, postmistress, she would sink below their ken: she read it in their eyes when she announced what she was going to do; announced it bluntly, even truculently; for she was determined not to sail under false colours.

It was the same with her relatives. Lizzie, for instance: Lizzie who still traded on past glories -- and also, alas! went on hoarding up poor John's children -- was loud in praise of her courage and independence. But a blind man could have seen her relief when she learnt that these virtues were to be practised at a distance. Jerry, of course, like the sensible fellow he was, ranged himself on her side -- if he did seem a trifle unsure of Fanny -- but Zara made no bones of her horrification.

"Have you really thought seriously, Mary, of what you are about to do? Of the publicity, the notoriety it will entail? For, no matter what has happened, you are still our poor, dear Richard's wife. And my one fear is, the odium may redound on him."

"Zara, I've thought till I could think no more. But it's either this or the workhouse. People who are too good to know me any longer must please themselves. To tell the truth, I don't very much care. But as for what I'm doing reflecting on Richard . . . no, that's too absurd!"

It wasn't really Richard, it was herself Zara was concerned for; and in how far having a postmistress for a sister would damage her prospects. Besides, never again, poor thing, would she be able to give Richard's name as a reference. Ah, had Zara only been different! Then the two of them, sisters, and bound by one of nature's closest ties, might have combined forces; Zara have managed the house? taught the children, even perhaps have augmented their slender joint incomes by opening a little school.

Thinking these things Mary found she must have dozed off; for when, feeling extremely cold, she opened her eyes again, it was broad daylight. Daylight: and all around her what seemed to her the flattest, barest, ugliest country she had ever had the misfortune to see. Not a tree, not a bit of scrub, hardly so much as a bush broke the monotony of these plains, these immeasurable, grassy plains: here, flat as pancake, there, rolling a little up and down, or rising to a few knobbly hillocks, but always bare as a shorn head -- except for lumps of blackish rock that stuck up through the soil. You could see for miles on every side, to where the earth met the sky. Another ugly feature was the extreme darkness of the soil: the long, straight road they drove was as black as all the other roads she had known had been white or red. A cloudy sky, black roads, bare earth: to Mary, lover of towns, of her kind, of convivial intercourse, the scene struck home as the last word in loneliness and desolation.

Even the children felt it. "Why are there no trees?" demanded Cuffy aggressively, the crosspatch he always was after a broken night. "I don't like it without."

And Lucie's echoing pipe: "Why are there no trees, Mamma?"

And then the place itself.

"Is this it? Is this all?" more resentfully still. "Then I think it's simply hidjus!"

"Oh, come! Don't judge so hastily."

But her own courage was at zero when, having clambered down from the coach with legs so stiff that they would hardly carry her, she stood, a child on either hand, and looked about her. -- Gymgurra! Two wide, ludicrously wide cross-roads, at the corners of which clustered three or four shops, a Bank, an hotel, the post office, the lockup; one and all built of an iron-grey stone that was almost as dark as the earth itself. There were no footpaths, no gardens, no trees: indeed, as she soon learnt, in Gymgurra the saying ran that you must walk three miles to see a tree; which however was not quite literally true; for, on the skyline, adjoining a farm, there rose a solitary specimen . . . a unicum.

Their new home, the "Post and Telegraph Office," with on its front the large round clock by which the township told the time, stood at one of the corners of the cross-roads. Facing it was a piece of waste ground used for the dumping of rubbish: thousands of tins lay scattered about, together with old boots, old pots, broken crockery: its next-door neighbour was the corrugated-iron lock-up. Until now, it had consisted only of an office and two small living-rooms. For her benefit a three-roomed weatherboard cottage had been tacked on behind. This poor little dingy exterior was bad enough; inside, it was even worse. The former postmaster had been a bachelor; and before she and the children could live in the rooms he had left, these would have to be cleaned from top to bottom, and the walls given a fresh coat of whitewash, to rid them of greasy smears and finger-marks, of the stains of flies and squashed spiders. In the wooden portion -- two small bedrooms and a kitchen -- all the workmen's sawdust and shavings still lay about. From the back door three crude wooden steps led to a yard which, except for the water tank, held only rubbish: bottles galore, whole and broken; old boxes; boots and crockery again; with, she thought, every kerosene-tin that had been emptied since the house was first built. Never a spadeful of earth had been turned.