Ernie stared at him and had the grace to cover his eyes with his left hand.
“How did you bloody get it?”
“She asked me to post it. But we were quarantined first.”
“You’re right, Tim,” Ernie murmured very calmly. “Winnie very loyal.”
“I just want some reasonable help,” Tim reminded him.
But Ernie raised his head and seemed to begin arguing with an unseen audience. “Tyler’s Touring Company. Premier British Touring Group. From triumphs in New Zealand and before that Fiji, before that again America! Acclaimed in California. Travelling players. Jesus, travelling! Grand repute. Crowned bloody heads. By appointment to the court of. Young Arthur. Tyler’s Touring Company. She came to the house as Young Arthur, wearing actor’s rags from the Tyler Company. Asked for me and Winnie. Primrose said we were not there. Winnie didn’t actually meet her. Poor bloody Primrose did the turning of her away. But Winnie watching from deep inside the house thought straight away, That’s an actress playing a boy. And it was, of course. Astounded that dolt of a sailor Reid didn’t spot it straight off. The role of Young Arthur famous on three continents. Tyler’s a company, of course, you’d never find touring a bushweek place like this! Cities! Golden harbours.” Ernie stood up. “I’d no idea at all Winnie found the picture.” He shook his head. “Only safe thing with women is to have no secrets.”
Tim put the picture away in its envelope and looked up at standing Ernie.
“For an ugly bastard I have known beautiful women,” Ernie told him, his eyes softened and glistening.
“This was a girl though, Ernie.”
Ernie said, “I know that. Met her when I was doing audits for North Coast Cane Company. Big trip to bloody Sydney, Tim. A party at the Hotel Australia. Next day she and I drove out to Watson’s Bay and looked over the cliff. Should’ve bloody jumped. I was proud, Tim. So bloody proud. Thought I was bloody Christmas. Young Arthur. Utter enchantment, but didn’t touch her. Some other bastard touched her. Some other bastard got to her core.”
“Did you tell Winnie that?”
“Wouldn’t believe me. Anyhow, Ernie wasn’t home, was he? On Showground Hill when Flo called there. Since we were friends for bloody life—she’d said so—you would have thought she would have come down to the office in Central, would have gone there first, much closer to the boat. Maybe … well, I thought she might have wanted to claim me, cause trouble between Winnie and … So she went up to the house, and she might have been tired all at once. She’d gotten Mrs. Mulroney’s address from someone. Addresses like that shared amongst women in the know. Actresses and so on. Must’ve got overwhelmed from the sea journey. The strangeness of bloody Kempsey. Sort of blackness of its tone. Dullness. I don’t know. Defeated anyway. And straight to Mrs. Mulroney. No names. Bloody huge final pain. Face in a flask. Do you know this poor bloody girl? I know her, I know her, constable. Her name is poor bloody Flo.”
Flo? What an ordinary tag for something all the elements of earth and sky strained so long to produce. Name of a barmaid. Name of an actress. Flo. Now may your servant depart. At the sounding of that ordinary, bush town, bushweek, jovial name. Name from a picnic to Watson’s Bay. Name of laughter and half a glass of gin after the play. Flo, bloody Flo.
Ernie said, “Have you seen this woman, Mr. Malcolm? Doesn’t look familiar, constable. My sweet little actress. What does that prick Ernie Malcolm think? He thinks the harm’s done already. He cries out and bites his knuckles in private, in his office, behind the door. Harm’s done and can’t be unravelled by a pillar of society coming forward and saying, I took Flo to Watson’s Bay. Flo came here to let me know. No need for me to say that with a big bullet-headed idiot like Hanney making notes and bloody sniffing. I wrote a letter to keep him on that particular job, the hopeless bastard.”
Committing Missy to her dreary route with Constable Hanney! That was a crime, but by his tormented face, Ernie had already discovered the fact for himself.
“No use telling anyone the truth that I never touched the girl. Winnie knew I wanted to touch. The world is too much with us, says Winnie. I can’t explain the excitement, Tim, when I heard of Albert Rochester and the rescue. And Habash talking like a fountain, praising you. Can’t explain the excitement. Thinking, raise a hero in Flo’s name. Bring him forward, let Flo fall into the shadow. Open the bridge and fill the passageway with a screen of bloody heroes. Winnie knew straight away what I was up to, and so we had it out. Over your bravery, Tim. Over Albert Rochester’s remains, the great marriage brawl. Things never went well again. A sober woman. A bloody gin fiend in a week flat! Bloody took to it with a passion!”
Ernie shook his head and sat again. “What can you do with that photograph there?”
“I don’t want to do too much, Ernie. The thing is, I’ve come to the furthest place in the world. If I’m pushed out, it’s the bloody void for me. Not Queensland, do you understand? The bloody void.”
“I can resist any story you spread, Tim. I have plenty of friends.”
“Do they include a new editor of the Chronicle, whoever that may be? Winnie spoke to me, Ernie. Passed the photograph to me. It has to be used for purposes she would approve of.”
They both speculated in silence on this.
“If I yield to you on this, you’ll be back with that picture every week.”
“Only if my customers are warned off, and my suppliers. You know me well enough, Ernie. What I desire is a peaceful life.”
“I never wanted anything but a peaceful life for you, Tim. Until you started to write those things.”
Tim shook his head. “If you still believe I wrote them, watch for the Offhand’s letter of apology.”
Ernie Malcolm shrugged. “Purposes Winnie would approve,” he said.
“Write me the letter of recommendation. Or rather, write Kitty one.”
Ernie inhaled and reached for a sheet of correspondence paper.
The letter Ernie and Tim devised, and took to have typed out on Ernie’s huge typewriter by Miss Pollack, read well enough.
To Whom it May Concern:
Dear Sir,
This to introduce to you Mrs. Katherine Shea of Belgrave Street, Kempsey, an exemplary member of the community. When her husband’s business fell into unfortunate debt, she acquitted the total amount as soon as she knew about it. I have no hesitation in recommending her to you on the grounds of her business ability, her high moral values, and her reliability in commercial matters. I do so in the highest terms possible.
Mr. E. V. Malcolm,
Justice of the Peace
Beneath Miss Pollack’s long fingers, the letter of rescue bloomed. And though Tim might have inherited Bandy as a brother-in-law, fellow believer and shareholder, he had avoided having him as master. His master was Kitty, and he was at peace.
Returning to T. Shea—General Store, Tim made a detour to the bridge, where its planking rose out over the water and threw a shade over the river bank. Here he tore Winnie’s envelope and Missy’s photograph to pieces and floated them downstream. The river would obscure with its silt every fragment.
Missy now was indefinitely blended with her ancestors.
The Close
AS THE AUSTRALIAN AUTUMN brought in temperate air, the Macleay newspapers let people know that Mr. Bandy Habash had bought the large Clarence River drapery store previously owned by Mr. F. O. Bentley. This gave Bandy instantly a place in New South Wales Northern Rivers society, and Mamie told Tim and Kitty that since Mr. F. O. Bentley was a member of the Grafton Jockey Club, he had been disposed to write Bandy a letter of introduction to the more junior Macleay Turf Club.
As a result, on a day in late April, the Shea family attended the running of the Macleay Autumn Cup. M. M. Chance’s four-year-old Dasher was beaten into second place by five lengths, finishing behind Mr. B. Habash’s roan, Strong Medicine, ridden by the owner. Later, a delighted Mr. Habash and his fiancée Miss Mamie Kenna were photographed with the Autumn Cup Bandy had garnere
d. Mrs. Kitty Shea, towards the end of her term, applauded the event from a camp stool set up on the tray of the delivery dray.
Coastal steamers, though still forced to moor at New Entrance, had brought in members of the racing fraternity from other parts of the North Coast. Burrawong had also brought in punters from Sydney, as well as a small number of regular passengers, Mrs. Molly Burke amongst them. She went through a restrained reunion with her husband and told him that under pressure from the Provincial of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at Randwick, a cousin of Old Burke’s, young Ellen had at last uttered in tears the name of the father of the child she was carrying.
As Bandy Habash emerged out of the prize ring, smiling in jockey silks of green and blue, to be congratulated by Tim Shea, Mr. Burke of Pee Dee station, whom Tim had not known to be present at the race meeting, launched himself at Bandy and felled him with a furious blow. Restrained by a combination of constables and citizens, Mr. Burke would not state what his reason for this attack was. Mr. Habash for his part said he would not press charges.
Later that day, after a conversation with her sister Kitty to which Tim was not a party, Mamie Kenna broke off her engagement to Mr. Habash. To some people’s surprise, Mr. Habash—not yet departed for the Clarence River—consoled himself with the observances of the Catholic Church—first confession, then the Rosary, Benediction, and daily Mass. Habash also made a number of appeals for help to Tim Shea, but though more sympathetic than some saw as proper Tim told him that nothing could be said to the sisters.
The week before the Macleay River Bridge connecting West and Central to East was opened, the British garrison of Mafeking, besieged by the Boers for longer than Kempsey had been besieged by plague, was relieved by a British flying column. No British garrisons were hostage any more in the world. Things had been restored to their accustomed balance. A procession was held in Belgrave Street and down Smith. That was the end of the serious drum beating, and Tim Shea was pleased. It would be another year before Tim Shea would need to frown down upon reports in the Chronicle of General Kitchener’s sweeping clearance of the Boer population, of the burning of farms, of the crowding of Boer families into “camps of refuge,” or as the Spanish called them, “concentration camps.”
So, in the autumn of Bandy’s victory in the Macleay Cup and the British victory of Mafeking, a conviction of civilisation restored ran in the veins of all the citizens of the Shire of the Macleay. The white thwarts of the bridge stood as high as Lucy’s Angelus tower. Blackbutt planking was broad enough for any herd crossing to the markets in West, and the pathway had been fitted with bays to allow citizens to shelter as the herds came over.
The opening of the bridge was marked by a regatta to which Captain Reid of the Burrawong had been invited to contribute that now rarely seen vessel. Burrawong, however, despite its new rat-proof hawsers and its weekly fumigation at Darling Harbour, was not allowed to moor at Central wharf after honouring the bridge. It was required to retreat to its accustomed quarantine station inside the New Entrance. Captain Reid nonetheless ingratiated himself with the populace by carrying every flag in Burrawong’s lockers. The high colour could not be allowed to obscure the reality that plague still sought a landfall everywhere, and that cases were still occurring around the shores of Sydney Harbour.
The regatta and the opening of the bridge were observed from their own segment of river bank by Mr. and Mrs. Tim Shea, their children Johnny and Annie and the new-born infant, Maude. Mamie Kenna and Joe O’Neill were also in the group. They sat apart, although a friendliness was growing between them.
Some of the conversation at the bridge opening concerned the life sentence Mr. and Mrs. Mulroney received for the manslaughter of the young English actress Flo Meades. Amongst the notables, Ernie Malcolm made a brief reappearance. People were cheered to see him, though noticed that these days he stood back a bit.
But Bandy Habash was not at all visible in Kempsey for the civic event linking Central with East. Tim Shea knew he had already gone to Sydney to see Ellen Burke, and now lay low in town, wearing a scapular provided him by Mrs. Kitty Shea, who still secretly spoke to him.
He had left a letter for Mamie, which she read, retained, but did not reply to.
Dearest Woman,
I appeal to you as one who has only recently seen Salvation’s light. I was guilty of extreme sins within your own family, but they were the sins of a man unredeemed, a man in darkness, an infidel who thought those who dwelt in Light were infidels. I have now drunk at the Fountainhead, I now dwell in Radiance, and my past crimes have no bearing on my present life or intentions.
My life is turned utterly, like the face of a flower, to the Divine light of your face. I have tried to expiate my sin with Ellen Burke and will speak to her and will of course forever support her child. It is she who has chosen not to take me as a husband and will now seek her independent fortune in Sydney. To that fortune, I shall make appropriate contributions.
You are my lodestone, and if you would only, dear woman, return to our former arrangement, you will never have cause to doubt my devotion.
Yours forever and ever, in saecula saeculorum,
Bandy Habash
Many small craft speckled the river for the bridge opening, including one rowed by two ten-year-olds, Eddie and Ronald Sage. This rowboat, through too much shy-acking on the part of the children on board, capsized. The Sage boys’ younger sister Doris was thrown into the tide and gave Johnny Shea, who had already been playing in the shallows, wavering towards the depths but strangely obedient to his parents’ edict that he should not swim out amongst the boats, a pretext to go out into the depths to save her. Eventually, on the recommendation of Mr. Ernie Malcolm, Secretary of the Humane Society, Macleay branch, Johnny Shea was awarded the Silver Medal of the Society for saving the Sage child. It was acknowledged by his parents that this award was very good for the child.
From the day after the bridge opening, one of the busiest transitters was Tim Shea, transporting his household goods to the newly purchased store in East by dray. The signwriter did the place out in blue and gold, and the lettering said K. SHEA—GENERAL STORE. No one seemed to refer much to this change, or persecute Tim about it. For by then it was generally acknowledged that Tim Shea wasn’t the dangerous fellow some had earlier claimed him to be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Keneally reached a new level of renown as one of Australia’s—and the world’s—leading literary figures with the release of Stephen Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film adaptation of Schindler’s List, for which Thomas Keneally had won the prestigious Booker Prize upon its original publication. Among Thomas Keneally’s most well-known novels are The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates, Gossip from the Forest, and, most recently, Woman of the Inner Sea. Actively involved in Australia’s republican movement, he has served on numerous government councils and commissions in his native country and has taught at universities there and in the United States. Currently he is a Distinguished Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Irvine. Married, with two daughters, he divides his time between California and Sydney.
Thomas Keneally, A River Town
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