He touched the boy’s head. “We are going to East,” he whispered.
He saw one day, while passing the creamery in Smith Street, Ernie Malcolm in a dove-grey suit, somehow apt for the season of mourning, passing down the pavement and entering the staircase to his offices. The Argus had carried a piece,
BRAVE SURVIVOR, MR. E. MALCOLM, BACK AT DESK.
The gist was that Ernie had chosen to lose himself in his accounting.
So at last Ernie had been declared brave in his own right, and as senselessly as Tim had first been.
Tim had imagined unleashing the girl’s name the second after his release from the plague ward. But a Saturday and Sunday followed his release, and so he had secreted Winnie’s envelope with the photograph of boy-impersonating Missy in the London Illustrated News, the 1891 edition with the flood marks and the views of Uganda ceded to Britain by Germany in exchange for Heligoland. Having lived and been returned to the great turbulence of events, he was too stupefied for the first few days, but by late on the Sabbath he had begun practising a false hand on scraps of paper. Because he must write his own letter, as he saw it. Winnie was not here to rescue Missy. He was the living rescuer.
It began to strike him too that he needed to retain Missy’s picture with Winnie’s contrived handwriting on the back.
On Monday morning he wrote his letter on some Aberdeen Line notepaper he’d been keeping since his emigration voyage more than ten years back. The moist Macleay air had by now spotted its creaminess with little discs of brownish stain.
The letter said that the Commissioner of Police for New South Wales, situated in Sydney, who sought a name in the Mulroney case, should enquire from Tyler’s Theatrical Company, presently touring somewhere in the Australian colonies or perhaps in New Zealand. He said what the young performer’s name was, and added that she seemed to have a repute for playing the role of Young Arthur. He posted this communication in its staged hand at Central Post Office, together with Kitty’s renewal of subscription to The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, the Sheas’ credit being at least better with that divine organ of mercy than it was with Truscott and Lowe.
Missy’s name would be uttered at the Mulroneys’ trial, and the order of things thus restored. He had at last a sense that Missy was now a redeemed vacancy. His dreams were a jangled mess of things from the plague hospital, and he was content that they should be. Missy no longer entered. Her plain name had saved him, and he had taken her as far as could be expected of ordinary flesh. There was still a distance which she could perhaps take him. For that reason he had retained her photograph.
The affianced Mamie, walking over to Savage’s Emporium on some business for Kitty, ran into her sister from up the river, Mrs. Molly Burke. Molly had come to town with her husband and daughter, and without rushing to report to their relatives in the general store or to introduce Old Burke to the new immigrant, they had taken rooms at the Commercial. Though the two sisters embraced, Mamie later said there was something about the meeting which did not measure up. It did not resemble the previously imagined reunion of Mamie with the grandest and most successful Kenna.
That evening the Sheas, Mamie and the children were eating a normal meal when Old Burke and Molly did appear at the back door. Molly was chastened, embarrassed at having been seen to creep into town.
“We thought you were worried about Timmy and the plague,” Kitty remarked, winking. They had not heard about it though, and now were informed—chiefly by Kitty and Mamie. All Tim did was hold his hands up and say, “Clean bill of health.”
“Not here on pleasant business,” Old Burke growled through his clenched pipe. Sitting at table and humbly accepting tea, it didn’t seem as if he was going to be infallible on any subject at all tonight. They sat severely apart, Old Burke and the Molly he had so strenuously courted in the store. They were not a united camp. This fact at once paired, allied and reconciled Mamie and Molly. Molly’s hand reached out to Mamie’s wrist, wriggled it.
“So, my little sister,” said Molly. “Here!”
“No other place,” said Mamie. “And very glad I came.”
But the sisterly jollity still seemed forced and silences intervened. Some sorrow had overtaken Molly. She did not even comment on what she must surely by now know—that her sister was engaged to the hawker.
“Look, might as well say it,” Old Burke soon announced. “We are putting Molly and Ellen on the boat. That’s the situation. I expect it to go no further than your ears, but Ellen has conceived.”
He shook his head and wiped his eyes.
“Some lop-eared boundary rider from Comara,” he said.
“How long?” breathed Kitty. Tim wanted to know too. Could it have been when the girl was in his care? Was this too on his slate?
“Seems to’ve been some time in December last,” said Molly.
All the women exchanged glances. They knew the perils, the hair’s-breadth nature of things. Was Flo or Missy present in the room to gaze quietly down on the constant risks of womanhood revealed here?
Molly said, “Thank God for Croydon.”
Tim realised she meant a suburb of the great capital down the coast.
“That’s Saint Anthony’s Home for Fallen Girls at Croydon we’re taking her to,” Molly explained to her newcomer sister.
“So you’re going to Sydney?” asked Kitty. “With the plague raging there?”
“Well, you did,” Molly told her a little testily. “Would you have Ellen stay on at Pee Dee until she shows, and bring her to town then?”
“Where is she now?” asked Mamie.
“She is in her room at the Commercial,” said Old Burke. “On retreat. Reading a devotional book as she should have done earlier. Flirtatious, you see. She’s flirtatious by nature.”
He glanced at Molly. He blamed his young wife for some of it, for a lack of gravity.
“Well, Jesus,” Kitty protested, “women are. Need to be too. To get you bloody crowd going.”
Molly sat back in her chair. She looked very tired. “Ask us the questions you’ve got to ask us,” she told them. “Who’s the father, for example?”
“Well,” said Old Burke, supplying the answer for his wife to get it done with. “She won’t say. And I remarked to her, does this mean there is more than one blackguard? And instead of a clear answer, I get tears.”
Molly said, “I’m glad I was there at Pee Dee. Men can take a hectoring approach.”
“And a bloody man is behind this,” said Kitty, lightening the discussion with wise and emphatic shakes of the head. “There’s only one Virgin Birth. The story’s used up.”
Both the other women laughed guiltily at this blasphemy from Kitty. Old Burke looked at Kitty with amazement.
“She’s foolishly protecting her lover,” said Molly with a twisted mouth.
“Don’t dignify him with a word like lover,” growled Old Burke. “He’s a brute and a bloody ram.”
As if Old Burke had never ridden high. But this was an awful and wilful scandal, Tim could see.
Old Burke said, “God, she flirts even with that Indian bastard, what’s his name? Haberdash? Molly herself’s no better.”
Mamie instantly flushed. No delays in the Kenna crowd showing their feelings. “I have news on that,” said Mamie. “I am engaged to Mr. Habash and don’t appreciate wordplay on his name, Mr. Burke.”
Molly lowered her fine eyes. She hadn’t been told after all. Old Burke paused in gouging away at his pipe.
“Mr. Habash is receiving instruction in the Faith,” Mamie added.
Molly wiped at a sudden sweat on her upper lip. “He’s hung around all of us, you know,” she scoffed, wanting to draw blood. “Until he found someone simple-minded enough.”
There was jealousy here. It betrayed Molly into letting on to things she wouldn’t let on to in her normal wisdom. Jealousy of the hawker!
“Well, thank you,” Mamie said, flaming. “That’s a grand estimation of me …”
But she sto
pped there because Old Burke threw his pipe down on the plate before him.
“You bloody Kenna women have gone utterly astray in your bloody minds!” he yelled.
The outburst brought a little silence at first. But it was a rope thrown to the sisters. Molly decided to sit forward and grab it. “So my family are to take the blame for this tragedy? For spoiling your daughter?”
She blazed and it was not all rage at Old Burke. But he served as the first victim and deserved to as well, the old fool. Molly would punish him at length later as well. He’d be treated to the turned shoulder at night when she got back to Pee Dee.
Old Burke could foresee this and became more plaintive. “I just think there’s an air of conspiracy gets going when women are together.” He’d widened the accusation from just the Kenna girls to the whole gender. “It isn’t always for the best, you know.”
The three women frowned communally at him. Of course this was Mamie’s first meeting with Old Burke. Old Burke was Molly’s fortune, the rumour which had brought Mamie through the Atlantic, the Indian, the Southern Ocean and up the Pacific coast into the Macleay. She had given Old Burke and Molly as an excuse for her migration. It was what Red and Mrs. Kenna had used to soothe their aged tears. This dismal old cow-cocky!
Molly ignored him and spoke to her sisters. “She reckons she’ll raise the child herself in Sydney.”
“All bloody well,” said Old Burke. “But she’s bloody young to pass off as a widow!”
“We will give her every support,” said Molly.
“Goes without saying,” muttered Old Burke.
“She has made it totally clear to me … totally clear,” Molly asserted, “that she will not marry for this cause. Whoever it is … the fellow, she won’t say. And she has made it clear that she won’t marry.”
“She’s been to confession and the sacraments,” growled Old Burke, as if this had a bearing on her decision.
Molly nodded. “That was this morning. And we’re off on Burrawong tomorrow, she and I. By all accounts, it’s fumigated to the last square inch. We’ll have to walk the deck pretending we’re overtaken by an urge to see the Sydney autumn fashions.”
“It’s too bloody believable in her case,” said Old Burke. “Believable she would get an urge like that!”
Tim remembered how well despite their arguments the girl had minded his children. “Give her my warmest wishes,” he said. “And tell her if she should need anything …”
“Yes,” Kitty said, finishing his sentence. “She mustn’t hesitate.”
All the party looked at each other understandingly. They thought his quarantine had left him clumsy, put his social timing off.
“But can’t we go and see her, Molly?” Kitty asked. “Mamie and myself? Sure we could see her. She might be embarrassed by Tim. But Mamie and me …”
Molly said of course. Then she turned back to Mamie. “Sister, do you love this Habash?”
“What an idiot question! I could put the darling little fellow in my pocket and walk the earth’s highways with him.”
“And do you trust him?”
“He’s a bloody scamp and a charmer. But he has taken to instruction like Cardinal Newman!”
Molly looked aged, and shook her head.
“Then God bless you both!”
Everyone but Old Burke could read what all this was. She would not be able to flirt with Bandy when next he came to Pee Dee. The bush was narrowing in on her.
The visit to Ellen was arranged for that evening, and Molly and Old Burke got up to leave. As they went through the house and store towards Belgrave Street, Old Burke hung back a second.
“Fellows tell me you’ve been hugely political, Tim,” he commented with the usual above-human-folly frown.
“It’s nonsense,” Tim told him.
“No. Be careful. You don’t think you’re political, but you bloody are by nature. Keep clear of it all. None of it’s worth a toss. Land is the whole story.”
Blood came to Tim’s face. “Tell them, bugger it!” He pointed off indefinitely towards the powerful and complicated town. “Tell your flash friends to let me live.”
Old Burke stared dolefully. “I think your troubles have got to you, Tim. It might be the start of an education.”
The self-important old streak of misery went and joined Molly, who waited for him by the pavement.
“Thank God I don’t have to ask you for favours,” cried Tim after him.
Molly looked away, but Kitty laughed.
The visit to Ellen was made and Mamie and Kitty came back home to drink tea with a look of mutual placation, of the old sisterly unity, on their faces.
“She really won’t name the feller,” said Molly. “Says if she does Old Burke will force a marriage.”
Both sisters seemed disappointed by this. They wanted to know for knowing’s sake as well. They could have been savage to him in the street when he came to town.
Next morning, a drogher took the Burke women off with Captain Reid and the other passengers, up the river to where Burrawong had moored. Tim’s letter travelled by the same ship. Captain Reid had already announced in the Argus that Burrawong was fitted with new anti-rat hawsers of the kind which had been developed to combat the plague in Calcutta two years before. They had come to the North Coast Steamship Navigation Company too late for lovely Winnie.
A full week after his release from quarantine, Tim sent Bandy to the hospital with a basket of puddings and biscuits for Sister Raymond, and then himself resolutely took from the bookcase the envelope with the inscribed photograph of Miss Florence Meades playing Young Arthur, put it in his breast pocket, decided not to wear a tie, and walked down Smith Street past the curtained Southern Cross Billiard Rooms, the Greek cafe, the Good Templars’, and took to the stairwell—beside Holt’s Ladies’ Fashions—to Ernie Malcolm’s office.
At the head of the stairs, Miss Pollack, from the Rudder’s Hill Pollacks in East, still kept Ernie’s outer office.
He told her he wanted to see Ernie.
“Could I have your name, sir?” she asked in her bush-flash, piss-elegant manner. Her parents would be his future customers with any luck, but he was tired of dancing around people.
“Tim Shea,” said Tim. “I was in plague quarantine with Ernie and his wife.” Watch it or I’ll breathe on you! he implied.
And she was chastened by such a pronouncement, and went and spoke to Ernie, who then appeared haggard in his dove-grey suit at the door of his office, looked out and said, “Oh, yes, Tim. Could you hold hard a few moments?”
As Ernie spoke his eyes darted around towards unseen things in the office. His manner said, “Expect nothing.” Then he near-closed the door on his visitor.
Some minutes passed, but Tim would not take the seat Miss Pollack recommended to him. He wanted Ernie to get a sense of a restless presence in his outer office, and indeed Ernie seemed to, coming to the door at last and wearily murmuring, “Yes, Tim,” ushering him in then with a slack hand.
From Ernie’s office you got a view of the butter factory and the laneway leading to Burrawong’s berth at Central wharf, left vacant—or else taken up by droghers—through the influence of plague. The walls of Ernie’s office were covered with bright certificates, some of them from Melbourne, from municipal councils there. An apostle of service all along Australia’s south-east coast.
“Sit, sit, sit,” sighed Ernie, gesturing to the visitor’s chair, going behind his desk which was covered by files, the ramparts behind which he defended himself against gusts of disabling loss and accusation. He looked once out of the window to the river, but then faced Tim.
“Ward mates, Tim, eh?”
There seemed to be great weariness not so much in the eyes as in the lower face, in a hang-dogginess there.
“You have no bad effects from all that?” asked Ernie.
“No,” said Tim. “Since I had no credit before, and I still have none.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ernie, staring out at the
river again for an answer. “Have you thought of going to Queensland, Tim? It’s said to be full of opportunity up there for people of your type.”
“My type? What is my bloody type?”
Ernie shrugged. “You take pretty quick offence at a man who means you no harm at all.”
“You yourself mentioned a reference when we were together in that place.”
“Yes, Tim. A random impulse of generosity.”
“Yes. But it had the features of an undertaking, Ernie.”
“Let me tell you it won’t do you any good. Your credit is shot through the head for some time yet. A solitary reference from me, even if I appended all my honorary secretaryships, would not cut sufficient ice for you, Tim. I must tell you this frankly.”
It was probably the case. All his charitable vanities, all his fussiness about asking for bills to be paid. It had ended with him being swept from the business map of the Macleay.
“What about for my wife then?”
“What, Tim?”
“What if you wrote a reference—to my dictation if you don’t mind—for my wife?”
“You want your wife to be your boss?”
It was what on reflection he wanted: the humble arrangement by which he’d be disciplined and saved. Better than depending on a future brother-in-law.
He said that. “Bloody sight nicer than the alternatives, Ernie.”
“But I don’t know your wife. I think you should just go, actually. Declare your true situation. Leave the business to be picked over by creditors. Queensland, Tim. That’s the go.”
Tim sat back. He was content for the moment with the strong tide of his blood.
“Why don’t you go to bloody Queensland, Ernie?”
“I am, despite everything, settled in here.” Ernie pointed to his walls of certificates. “These are the signs of the man I am. Bereaved, Tim. But solid.” He leaned forward, a man to be congratulated.
At once Tim took from his breast pocket the envelope with the photograph of Missy as a boy. He took the picture out and held it up. Ernie stared at it.
“You notice,” said Tim, “Winnie was careful that you should be saved. She scratched out the inscription. She wrote on the back, but named no one except the girl. Who badly needed to be named.”