menu_book Chapter 9

CHAPTER V. KU-E. PART ONE OF THREE They went to Mullenbimby by the two o'clock train from Sydney on the Friday afternoon, Jack having managed to get a day off for the occasion. He was a sort of partner in the motor works place where he was employed, so it was not so difficult, and work was slack. Harriet and Victoria were both quite excited. The Summers had insisted on packing one basket

of food for the house, and Victoria had brought some dainties as well. There were few people in the train, so they settled themselves right at the front in one of those long, open second-class coaches with many cane seats and a passage down the middle. "'This is really for the coal miners,' said Victoria. "'You'll see they'll get in when we get further down.'

She was rather wistful, after the vague coolness that had subsisted between the two households. She was so happy that Summers and Harriet were coming with her and Jack. they made her feel, she could hardly describe it, but so safe, so happy and safe. Whereas, often enough, in spite of the stalwart Jack, she felt like some piece of fluff blown about on the air, now that she was taken from her own home. With Summers and Harriet, she felt like a child

that is with its parents, so lovely and secure, without any need ever to look around. Jack was a man, and everything a man should be in her eyes, but he was also like a piece of driftwood, drifting on the strange, unknown currents in an unexplored nowhere, without any place to arrive at. Whereas, to Victoria, Harriet seemed to be rooted right in the center of everything. At last she could come to perfect rest in her, like a bird in a tree that remains still firm when the floods are

washing everything else about. If only Summers would let her rest in Harriet and him. But he seemed to have a strange vindictiveness somewhere in his nature that turned round on her and terrified her worse than before. If he would only be fond of her, that was what she wanted. If he would only be fond of her and not ever really leave her. Not love. When she thought of lovers she thought of something quite different, something rather vulgar, rather common, more

or less naughty. Ah, no, he wasn't like that. And yet, since all men are potential lovers to every woman, wouldn't it be terrible if he asked for love? Terrible, but wonderful. Not a bit like Jack, not a bit. Would Harriet mind? Victoria looked at Harriet with her quick, bright, shy brown eyes. Harriet looked so handsome and distant, she was a little afraid of her. Not that she was afraid of Summers.

Afraid as one woman is of another fierce woman. And Harriet was fierce, Victoria decided. Summers was demonish, but could be gentle and kind. It came on to rain, streaming down the carriage windows. Jack lit a cigarette and offered one to Harriet.

She, though she knew Summers disliked it intensely, when she smoked, particularly in a public place like this long open railway carriage, accepted, and set by the closed window smoking. The train ran for a long time through Sydney, or the endless outsides of Sydney. The town took almost as much leaving as London does, but it was different. Instead of solid rows of houses, solid streets like London,

it was mostly innumerable detached bungalows and cottages, spreading for great distances, scattering over hills, low hills, and shallow inclines. And then waste and marshy places, and old iron and abortive corrugated iron works, all like the last day of creation, instead of a new country. Away to the left, they saw the shallow waters of the big opening where Botany Bay is, the sandy shores, the factory chimneys, the lonely places where it is still

bush, and the weary half-established straggling of more suburb. Como, said the station sign, and they ran on bridges over two arms of water from the sea, and they saw what looked like a long lake with wooded shores and bungalows. A bit like Lake Como, but oh so unlike. That curious somberness of Australia, the sense of oldness with the forms all worn down, low and blunt, squat, the squat-seeming earth, and then they ran at last into the real country, rather rocky,

dark old rocks, and somber bush with its different pale-stemmed, dull-leaved gum-trees, standing graceful, and various healthy-looking undergrowth, and great spiky things like zookas. As they turned south they saw tree ferns standing on one knobby leg among the gums, and among the rocks ordinary ferns, and small bushes spreading in glades and up sharp hill-slopes. It was virgin bush, and as if unvisited, lost, somber, with plenty of space,

yet spreading gray for miles and miles in a hollow toward the west. Far in the west, the sky having suddenly cleared, they saw the magical range of the blue mountains, and all this hoary space of bush between. This strange, as it were, invisible beauty of Australia, which is undeniably there, but which seems to lurk just beyond the range of our white vision. You feel you can't see, as if your eyes hadn't the vision in them, to correspond with the outside landscape. for the landscape is so unimpressive like a face with little or no features a dark face it is so aboriginal out of our ken and it hangs back so aloof

summers always felt that he looked at it through a cleft in the atmosphere as one looks at one of the ugly-faced distorted aborigines with his wonderful dark eyes that have such an incomprehensible ancient shine in them across gulfs of unbridged centuries and yet when you don't have the feeling of ugliness or monotony in landscapes or in nigger you get a sense of subtle remote formless beauty more poignant than any ever experienced before "'You're wonderful Australia,' said Harriet to Jack. "'I can't tell you how it moves me. "'It feels as if no one had ever loved it.'

"'Do you know what I mean? "'England and Germany and Italy and Egypt and India, "'they've all been loved so passionately. "'But Australia feels as if it had never been loved "'and never come out into the open,

"'as if man had never loved it "'and made it a happy country, "'a bride country, or a mother country. i don't suppose they ever have said jack but they will asked harriet surely they will i feel that if i were australian i should love the very earth of it the very sand and dryness of it more than anything where should we poor australian wives be put in victoria leaning forward her delicate frail face that reminded one of a flickering butterfly in its wavering

Yes, said Harriet meditatively, as if they had to be considered, but were not as important as the other question. I'm afraid most Australians come to hate the Australian earth a good bit before they're done with it, said Jack. If you call the land a bride, she's the sort of bride not many of us are willing to tackle.

She drinks your sweat and your blood, and then often as not lets you down, does you in. Of course, said Harriet, it will take time, and of course a lot of love. A lot of fierce love, too. Well, let's hope she gets it, says Jack. They treat the country more like a woman they pick

up on the streets than a bride, to my thinking. I feel I could love Australia, declared Harriet. Do you feel you could love an Australian? asked Jack, very much to the point. Well, said Harriet, arching her eyes at him, that's another matter. From what I see of them, I rather doubt it, she laughed, teasing him. I should say you would, but that's no good

loving Australia if you can't love the Australian. Oh, yes, it is. If, as you say, Australia is like the poor prostitute, and the Australian just bullies her to get what he can out of her, and then treats her like dirt. It's a good deal like that, said she, and then you expect me to approve of you? Oh, we're not all alike, you know. It always seemed to me, said Summers, that somebody will have to water Australia with their blood before it's a real man's country.

The soil, the very plants, seemed to be waiting for it. You've got a lurid imagination, my dear man, said Jack. Yes, he has, said Harriet. He's always so extreme. The train jogged on, stopping at every little station. They were near the coast, but for a long time the sea was not in sight.

The land grew steeper, dark straight hills like cliffs, masked in somber trees, and then the first plume of colliery smoke among the trees on the hill face. But they were little collieries, for the most part, for the men just walked into the face of the hill, down a tunnel, and they hardly disfigured the land at all.

then the train came out on the sea lovely bays with sand and grass and trees sloping up towards the sudden hills that were like a wall there were bungalows dotted in most of the bays then suddenly more collieries and quite a large settlement of bungalows from the train they looked down on many many pale gray zinc roofs sprinkled about like a great camp close together yet none touching and getting thinner towards the sea the chimneys were faintly smoking there was a haze of smoke and a sense of home home in the wilds a little way off among the trees plumes of white steam betrayed more collieries a bunch of schoolboys clambered into the train with their satchels at home as schoolboys are and several black colliers with tin luncheon boxes then the train ran for a mile and a half to stop at another little settlement Sometimes they stopped at beautiful bays in the hollow between hills, and no collieries,

only a few bungalows. Harriet hoped Moulambimbe was like that. She rather dreaded the settlements, with the many, many iron roofs and the wide, unmade roads of sandy earth running between, down to the sea, or skirting swamplike little creeks. The train jogged on again.

They were there. The place was half and half. There were many tin roofs. but not so many. There were the wide unmade roads running so straight as it were to nowhere, with the little bungalow homes half lost at the side. But they were pleasant little bungalow

homes. Then, quite near, inland, rose a great black wall of mountain, or cliff, or tor, a vast dark tree-covered tor that reminded Harriet of Matlock, only much bigger. The town trailed down from the foot of this mountain towards a railway, a huddle of grey and red-painted iron roofs. Then over the railway toward the sea it began again in a scattered, spasmodic fashion, rather forlorn bungalows and new stores, and fields with rail fences, and more bungalows above the fields, and more still, running down the creek-shows toward the hollow sea,

which lay beyond like a gray mound, the strangest sight Harriet had ever seen. Next to the railway was a field, with men and youths playing football for their lives. Across the road from the football field was a barber shop, where a man on horseback was leaning, chattering to the barber, a young intelligent gentleman in eyeglasses, and on the broad grass of the roadside drew the trees with the bright scarlet flowers perching among

the gray twigs. Going toward the sea, they were going away from the town that slid down at the bush-covered foot of the dark door. The sun was just sinking to this great hill-face amid a kirtle of gray and white clouds, the faintest gold reflected in the more open eastern sky in front. strange and forlorn the wide sandy rutted road with the broad grass margin and just one or two bungalows verdun was the first a wooden house painted dark red but some had quite wide grass

around them inside their fences like real lawns victoria had to dart to the house agent for the key the other three turned to the left up another wide road cut in the almost nothingness past two strained bungalows perched on brick supports, then across a piece of grassland as yet unoccupied, where small boys were kicking a football, then round the corner of another new road, where water lay in a great puddle so that they had to climb onto the grass beside the fence

of a big red-painted bungalow. Across the road was a big bungalow built with imitation timbered walls, and a great corrugated roof and red, huge water-tanks. The sea roared loudly, but was not in sight. Next, along the forlorn little road, nestled a real bright red tiled roof among a high bushy hedge, and with a white gate. I do hope it's that, said Harriet to herself. She was so yearning to find another home. Jack stood waiting at the corner of the tall bit of grassy land above

the muddy cut-out road. There came Victoria, running in her eager way across the open space, up the slight incline. Evening was beginning to fall. Got him, called Jack. Yes, Mrs. Wynn was just washing herself, so I had to wait a minute. Victoria came panting up. Is that it? said Harriet, timidly at last, pointing to the bright red roof. Yes, that's it, said Victoria, pleased and proprietary. A boy from the big red bungalow

called to ask if he could bring milk across. The big red bungalow was a dairy, but Harriet followed eagerly on Jack's footsteps across the road. She peeped over the white gate as he unfastened it, a real lovely brick house with a roof of bright red tiles coming down very low over dark wooden verandas and huge round rain tanks, and a bit of grass and a big shed with double doors. Joy! The gate was open, and she rushed in under the tall over-leaning hedge

that separated them from the neighbor, and that reached almost to touch the side of her house, A wooden side veranda with bedsteads, old rusty bedsteads, patched with strip and rope, and then grass, a little front all of grass with loose hedges on either side, and the sea, the great Pacific right there, and rolling in huge white thunderous rollers not forty yards away under her grassy platform of a garden. She walked to the edge of the grass. Yes, just down the low cliff, really only a bank, went her own little path as down a steep bank and then was smooth yellow sand, and the long sea swishing white up its incline, and rocks to the left, and incredible long rollers furling over and crushing down on the shores. at her feet at her very feet the huge rhythmic pacific she turned to the house there it crouched with its long windows and its wide veranda and its various slopes of low red-tiled roofs perfect perfect the sun had gone down and the great front of the black mountain wall which she could still see over the hedge the house inside was dark with its deep verandas like dark eyelids half closed

somebody switched on the light long cottage windows and a white ceiling with narrow dark beams she rushed indoors once more in search of a home to be alone with lovat where he would be happy how the sea thundered Harriet liked the house extremely. It was beautifully built, solid, in the good English fashion. It had a great big room with dark jara timbering on the roof and the walls. It had a dark jara floor and doors, and some solid satisfactory jara furniture. A big real table and a sideboard and strong square chairs with cane seats. The Lord had sent her here,

that was certain and how delighted victoria was with her raptures jack whipped his coat off and went to the shed for wood and coal and soon had a lavish fire in the open hearth a boy came with milk and another with bread and fresh butter and eggs ordered by mrs win the big black kettle was on the fire and harriet took lovat's arm she was so moved through the open seaward door as they sat at the table, the near sea was glimmering pale and greenish in the sunset, and breaking with a

crash of foam right, as it seemed, under the house. If the house had not stood with its little grassy garden some thirty or forty feet above the ocean, sometimes the foam would have flown to the doorstep or to the steps of the loggia. The great sea, roaring at one's feet. After the evening meal, the women were busy making up beds and tidying round, while the men sat by the fire. Jack was quiet. He seemed to brood, and only spoke abstractly, vaguely. He just sucked his pipe

and stared in the fire, while the sea boomed outside, and the voices of the women were heard eager in the bedrooms. When one of the doors leading on to the verandas was opened, the noise of the sea came in frightening like guns. The house had been let for seven months to a man and wife with eleven children. When Summers got up at sunrise in the morning, he could well believe it, but the sun rose golden from a low fume of haze in the northeastern sea.

The waves rolled in pale and bluey glass green, wonderfully heavy and liquid. They curved with a long arch, then fell in a great hollow thud, and a spurt of white foam, and a long, soft, snow-pure rush of forward-flat foam. Summers watched the crest of fine, bristling spume fly back from the head of the waves as they turned and broke. The sea was all yellow-green light, and through the light came a low, black tramp-steamer lurching up and down on the waves,

disappearing altogether in the lustrous water, save for her bit of yellow-banded funnel and her mast tips, then emerging like some long, out-of-shape dolphin on a wave-top. She was like some lost mongrel running over a furrowed land. She bellowed and barked forlornly, and hung round on the up-and-down waves.

Summer saw what she wanted. At the south end of the shallow bay was a long, high jetty straddling on great tree trunk poles out onto the sea and carrying a long line of little red coal trucks, the sort that can be tipped up. Beyond the straddling jetty was a spit of low, yellow-brown land, grassy with a stiff little group of trees like ragged Noah's arctrees, and further in a little farm place with two fascinating big gum trees that stuck out of their clots of foliage in dark tufts at the end of slim, upstarting branches. But the lines from the jetty ran inland for two hundred yards to where a tiny calluary was plumbing steam and smoke from beyond a marsh-like little creek. The steamer wanted to land.

She saw the line of little trucks full and ready. She bellowed like a miserable cow, sloping up and down and turning round on the waters of the bay. Near the jetty the foam broke high on some sheltering rocks. The steamer seemed to watch yearningly, like a dog outside a shut door. A little figure walked along the jetty, slowly, unconcernedly.

The steamer bellowed again. The figure reached the end of the jetty and hung out a red flag. Then the steamer shouted no more, but slowly, fearfully, turned and slunk up and down the waves back towards Sydney. name. The jetty, the forlorn, pale brown, grassy bank running out to the sea, with the clump of sharp, hard-pointed, dark conifers, trees of the southern hemisphere, stiff and mechanical,

then the foreshore with yellow sand and rollers, then two bungalows and a bit of waste ground full of this. That was the southern aspect. Northwards, next door, was the big imitation black-and-white bungalow, with a tuft of wind-blown trees and half-dead hedge between it and the summer's house. That was north, and the sun was already sloping upwards and northwards. It gave summers an uneasy feeling, the northward travelling of the climbing sun, as if everything

had gone wrong. Inland, lit up dark grey, with its plummy trees in the morning light, was the great mountain, or tor, with bare grain rock showing near the top, and above the ridgetop the pure blue sky, so bright and absolutely unsullied, it was always a wonder. There was an unspeakable beauty about the mornings, the great sun from the sea, such a big, untamed, proud sun, rising up into a sky of such tender delicacy, blue, so blue, and yet so frail that

even blue seems too coarse a color to describe it, more virgin than humanity can conceive. The land inward lit up, the prettiness of many painted bungalows with tin roofs, clustering up the low upslopes of the gray-tree bush, and then rising like a wall, facing the light, and still lightless the tore face, with its high up-rim so gray, having tiny trees feathering against the most beautiful, frail sky in the world. Morning. But Summers turned to

the house. It stood on one of the regulation lots, probably fifty feet by a hundred and fifty. The bits of level grass in front was only fifty feet wide, and perhaps about the same from the house to the brim of the sea-bank, which dropped bushyly down some forty feet to the sand and the flat shore rocks and the ocean. But this grassy garden was littered with bits of rag and newspapers, seashells, tins and old sponges, and the lot next to it was a marvelous constellation of tin cans

in every stage of rustiness, if you peeped between the bushes. You'll take the ashes and the rubbish too?" said Summers to the sanitary man who came to take the sanitary tin of the earth closet every Monday morning. No, responded the individual briefly, a true Australian cockney answer, impossible to spell, a sort of meow sound. Does anybody take them? No, we take no garbage. Then what do I do with them? Do what you like with them. And he marched off with the can.

it was not rudeness it was a kind of colonial humour after this sommer surveyed the cans and garbage of the next lot under the bushes and everywhere with colonial hopelessness but he began at once to pick up rags and cans from his own grass End of chapter 5, Kui, part 1 of 3