At that distance no one’s attention was drawn to the insignificant figure of a horseman, and he was soon well along the road which stretched through the white tussock, skirted the emerald upholstery of a lucerne pasture, and wound finally into the hills.
He had taken with him in his saddle-bags enough salt tucker to tide him over if night caught him between townships. He did on several occasions camp out, more by choice than through necessity, the heat of day giving place to agreeable tremors of mountain cool as he lay in his blanket on the rough grass, head propped against his saddle’s sweaty padding. He could not remember ever having felt happier. At the same time he wondered whether he could really exist without the sources of unhappiness. Half-dozing, half-waking to the tune of his horse’s regular cropping, and in his half-sleep what sounded like a pricking of early frost or needling by stars, he knew that his body and his mind craved the everlasting torments.
He found himself dreaming, or thinking, of Don Prowse seated in sweaty pyjamas, the snapshot album open on his lap, revealing snaps of Eddie Twyborn as he had most surely never looked in innocence or wantonness, and one of Eudoxia Vatatzes in pomegranate shawl, the spangled fan outspread to screen her breasts. Looks a regular cock-tease, eh? Don again, standing at the end of the brown lino passage, the light from the doorway behind him opening like a giant camera-lens. Eddie Twyborn put up a hand to ward off the photographer. Who, more purposeful, was standing at the bedside, red nipples as unblinking as foxes’ eyes in the surrounding fuzz of orange fur.
He was more amused than ashamed of his dream — or thoughts, if they were. He got up to re-tether his horse. She whinnied to see him, and he stroked her muzzle. Theirs was an honest relationship.
On one such occasion he dreamed of someone, he could not at first be certain, this snapshot dream was something of a double exposure, till finally he saw he was sitting beside Helen of the Harelip. They were seated on the brink of a rock pool, its water so clear and motionless they dared not breathe for fear they might ruffle its surface into some ugly and disturbing pattern. Whether the emotions they shared were joyful, it was difficult if not impossible to tell, only that they were united by an understanding as remote from sexuality as the crystal water in the rock basin below.
During his ride it occurred to him that he did not dream of Marcia; he only thought about her, and then coldly, briefly, on the longer, burning stretches of road.
When he had been away a week, Eddie returned to ‘Bogong’. Peggy Tyrrell ran down to the bridge, her bobbled shawl spread like a crow’s wings in flight, her thin black arms flailing at the evening. ‘Mrs Lushington just about threw a fit, Mrs Edmonds says. She’s been lookun for yer. She’s been onter Tumbarumba — Toomut — half the Monarer. Better make yerself good with ’er, love, or you’re a gonner.’
And Prowse came out on the veranda. ‘Nearly got me the sack, you bugger. I told you Marce had taken a fancy.’
‘What about the Golsons?’
Prowse looked down at the meniscus of a slanted whiskey. ‘They drove off,’ he sighed, ‘in the bloody Minerva. There was nobody to make a fourth at bridge.’
After the prodigal had bathed, the manager came into his room. ‘We did miss yer,’ Prowse said. ‘We wondered what ’ud happened to yer — down on the Murray.’ Eddie felt the finger, apparently checking on vertebrae. ‘Could ’uv got murdered or somethun …’
Mrs Tyrrell came in, but retreated on noticing nakedness. ‘Come on, you men,’ she shouted. ‘There’s a shoulder of mutton and baked pumpkun for tea.’
Before obeying her summons, Prowse advised, ‘I tell you, Ed, make it up with Marcia, and make it quick.’
Eddie decided to wait, which was what Marcia herself must have decided.
Denny and Eddie had been moving the wethers from Bald Hill down to the woolshed for crutching the following day. The men’s faces were pale with dust, each a different kind of clown.
‘Ever done any crutchun, Ed?’ Denny sniggered. ‘Break yer bloody back — snippun the dags off a sheep’s arse. Just you wait. You’ll be sore enough termorrer evenun.’
‘Have to get Peggy to rub my back.’
‘Wouldn’ like Peggy. Too bony.’ He hesitated thoughtfully. ‘Missus is bony. But Dot wouldn’t rub, I reckon, even if you asked ’er to.’
Dot’s husband sounded more resigned than sad.
‘You never know if you haven’t asked. You never know of any body what they’ll come at till you’ve tried it on.’
‘You reckon?’
Eddie had developed an affection for his simple mate, which he believed was reciprocated. They were brought closer by the evening light, and on Eddie’s side, the melancholy knowledge that the chasms created by language and class must always keep them apart.
When they had yarded the silly wethers (what was worse, in the presence of sheep Eddie always ended by convincing himself of the silliness of his own existence and human behaviour in general) his mate suggested with furtive pride — Denny did in fact glance over his shoulder, ‘Why dontcher stop off at our place, Ed, an’ drink a beer?’
‘I mightn’t be welcome. Your missus’ll be getting the tea. Or changing a nappy. Or washing one.’
‘Dot’s all right. She don’t wash too many nappies. She ’angs the same one out ter dry. Dot’s not as bad as they make out.’
So Eddie couldn’t let Denny down, the couple of clowns slouching in their saddles as the newcomer had seen the natives on his approach to ‘Bogong’ that first day, only that the native skin was now toned down from bacon to beige.
Despite acclimatisation and acceptance, he experienced a faint tremor of discovery approaching the Aliens’ huggermugger shack, Cortes, as it were, playing on both sides of the fence. But Denny did not notice, which made his mate, whether Cortes or First Clown, the more regretful of his isolation.
Dot came out. She was looking smaller, sharper than on the occasion of their first meeting, during her pregnancy. Tearful then for a moral lapse, she had grown fierce in defence of its fruit. Like the rickety shack she had acquired with marriage, her legitimised child was a property.
Denny quailed somewhat, but found courage to ask, ‘ ’Ow is she?’
‘ ’Ad the colic all evenin’. She’s sleepin’ now.’
The mother might never have seen Eddie before. Dot Allen had probably dismissed him to the limbo of foreigners and amateurs.
‘Thought you was gunner be late,’ she told her husband, ‘when I’ve almost got yer tea ready.’
‘Well, I’m not late, am I? An’ tea’s not ready.’ His burst of logic was unassailable. ‘You know Eddie, Dot. I’ve asked ’im back to drink a beer with us.’
‘Not with me, you haven’t. Haven’t the time for swillin’ beer.’ The shack shuddered as she swept inside.
Denny brought a bottle that had been hanging by its neck at the end of a rope inside the iron water-tank. He ventured into the kitchen and returned with a couple of chipped and stained enamel mugs.
‘No time!’ Dot shouted from within.
The beer was warmer than one would have hoped, and its head rising, slopped over into wasted pools.
Dot called, ‘Hope you men aren’t gunner get drunk an’ wake ’er up.’
‘Not enough ter get drunk on.’
‘I’ve known you do pretty well on a little.’
Encapsulated in evening light, the two friends sat looking out across the plain. From the shack drifted the eternal smells of boiling mutton and burnt cabbage.
‘Don’t wanter wake the baby,’ the mother shouted between bursts of hardware.
The baby had begun, indeed, to cry.