Shallows

  June 25th, 1831 This morning I saw two naked women tossed from the headsmen’s hut. It had been raining and they lay stupefied in the mud as I passed.

  The stench grows with each passing day. Up the beach there are rotting carcasses and the sand is oil-smeared and blue. Gulls swarm over the ragged skeletons that lie like hulks in the shallows.

  Churling, in the lookout this morning, was like a man with a fever. Once, he looked at me with a feeble expression of disappointment, stared at me until I was forced to look aside. Not a word was spoken. I fear he is mad.

  Only seven whales taken thus far with a yield of less than eighteen tuns of oils and some whalebone.

  At first Cleve thought the sound was rats. He had begun to fear the rats. But the noise was a wide, regular knocking like something loose in the wind, and the shoreward tin wall moved in and out like a heartbeat; he watched it: an inch in, then back to square, an inch in . . . When he stood, his head felt stuffed with rags. The noise and the movement of the wall continued. He had heard no footfalls. He moved to the door, touched the knob and was fixed with fear. His mind snagged on that night weeks ago when he ran out into the rain and found two men beaten and bleeding. Revenge? The noise and the wall’s heartbeat intensified. He opened the door. Wind rattled through the porous timbers of the jetty. Papers flickered behind him. Half the jetty lights were out. No light from the landing below. He crept along the wall outside, heard the scuttle of rodents, planted each foot fastidiously as he moved. Inched his head around the corner. Waited for his eyes to adjust. Deep in shadow against the wall, a man and a woman locked. He saw a sliver of flesh. Hair. Dark-twisted clothing. Cleve watched. He could have reached out and touched them. A fist fell against the big black back. Growls. The panting.

  ‘You pig, you pig, you pig, pig . . . pig,’ a deep woman’s voice said. Cleve heard the words almost breath-hot in his ear. Blood steamed in him; he stood and watched, mouth wide, until he could no longer trust his breathing. He slipped back inside and heard the thump, the vibration in the timbers like something fallen. Silence. Then a hawk and spit and footsteps. Cleve clutched the corners of his table as the door opened.

  ‘Figgis,’ the big man said, running fingers through his waxy hair. ‘Prince of Norway.’

  Cleve could only point to the pen and the open logbook on the table. The man leant on one hand and signed; he smelt of pork fat and pipesmoke and some ammoniac odour that Cleve could not identify.

  When the man left, closing the door carefully behind him, Cleve contemplated the big handprint stamped dark on the page. He turned the logbook about and put his own hand against the mark. It was wet; the fingers were longer and wider. He smelled his damp palm, curled it into a fist and observed the ivory of his knuckles.

  VI

  Well into the night, his body and soul chilled almost beyond feeling, Daniel Coupar rolled across the Hacker River bridge, blinded by the headlights of an approaching vehicle. His eyes burnt raw with whiteness; the lights seemed to slow, as though to torment him awhile before passing, then lost intensity for a moment, spearing the bush at the side of the road ahead before extinguishing altogether. Coupar cocked his head, saw in the jaundice of his own lights the parked truck at the edge of the road on the far bank. TRENT’S RENTALS, he read in black letters on the high sides behind the cabin. Then he heard the horn and the on-off glare of lights, and he slowed, suspicious. A figure moved down along the gaudy side of the truck: big-shouldered, grey-haired. Coupar braked; the tractor whinnied.

  ‘How are you, Daniel?’ Pell asked.

  ‘In what way?’ Coupar said, sinking back into the comfortable truck’s upholstery against his better judgment.

  ‘Oh, you know, mind body and soul.’ Pell lit a cigarette from the lighter on the dashboard.

  Coupar sighed, sniffed, and rubbed his chin to chafe up some warmth. ‘I reckon I’m about buggered on all three. Me body’s pre-Great War, me mind’s worthless, and me soul – me soul’s anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And I didn’t know what the hell you were, for a moment. Been a while.’

  Pell drew on his cigarette, features distinguishable for a moment in the ember-glow. ‘Funny,’ he said, exhaling, ‘I was thinking of going to see you.’

  ‘If it’s a pastoral visit, don’t bother – there’s no pasture left.’ As his body thawed in the warmth and closeness of the cabin, Coupar felt the thin edge of pain in his head again and the raw bitterness in his throat. Nausea and fatigue from the day threatened to overcome him.

  ‘Never thought I’d meet you coming from that direction,’ Pell said, ‘at this hour.’

  ‘Give us a smoke, you bugger.’

  Pell switched the cabin light on and offered Coupar the packet. Coupar used the light to take a long look at Pell: he seemed bigger, older, stronger than ever before, and there was an acetylene burning in his eyes and lines in his cheeks of jubilance or desperation.

  ‘Been to town, have you?’ Pell asked.

  ‘How long you been smoking bloody filter-tips?’

  ‘Since I took up driving trucks again.’

  Coupar lit one; Pell switched the light out and they sat in darkness, both men thinking carefully. Pell was awed by the wasted look of him. He looks like an old, old man, he thought; he looks half dead. Coupar wondered about the truck, was determined not to ask about it; the last time he had seen Pell driving a truck was in 1929, and, he mused, the truck was more of a cart with a motor, and he probably didn’t even have a licence.

  ‘What do you know, then?’ Pell said.

  ‘Me? Nothing. I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Heard you’ve been seeing humpbacks and right whales again out at Wirrup.’

  ‘Don’t talk too loud or too bloody soon. Some galah’s bound to hear and try to drop the protection law.’

  ‘Make the place feel like home again, I s’pose.’

  Coupar shrugged in the darkness. Pell felt the movement.

  ‘Find who you were looking for?’ Pell asked.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Angelus.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She went a couple of weeks ago,’ Pell said. ‘There was a barney out at the whaling station. She’s taken up with this conservation mob.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  This time Coupar felt Pell shrug. ‘Young. Half-right. Late.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Cookson?’ Another shrug. ‘Who knows?’

  Coupar sighed, feeling the smoke burn the rawness at the back of his throat. He felt emptier than he had felt before. ‘The town hasn’t changed.’

  ‘Expect it to?’

  ‘Things’re bad, though,’ Pell said, flicking ash into the tray in the dashboard with a fizz of sparks. ‘Recession. This unearthly drought. It’s got the weather chaps by the balls. They can’t explain a drought like this. Half the town out of work. Little farmers’re pulling out again. The noongas live like ghosts. And the council’s planned to spend some incredible amount on next year’s anniversary. Tourist promotion. Visit from the Queen. Making a replica of the Onan, for pity’s sake.’

  ‘Least the noongas’ll have another place to sleep in.’

  ‘Yeah.’ They both laughed a short, sad laugh. ‘Everybody’s waiting for something to happen,’ said Pell. Outside, the bush and the river were silent. A long, watery moon had appeared over the treeline.

  ‘I been waitin’ for years.’ Coupar felt an immense poverty, a lightness, and tasted the bitterness of vomit on his tongue: a souvenir of that long hour kneeling at the gleaming altar of Pustling’s lavatory bowl.

  ‘I was coming out – sooner or later – to ask for some advice.’

  ‘I haven’t got any advice,’ Coupar said, sucking bitterness from the filter-tip.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Take two aspirins and lie down and the world will go away.’

  ‘What about God?’

  ‘Three aspirins.’

  ‘I’m not sure I —’
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  ‘Look, don’t start on me about the problem of God right now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We don’t get on so well any more.’

  ‘I thought as one got older,’ Pell murmured, ‘one came closer to Him. You know: wisdom, age —’

  ‘Well, it’s not true. Shit, I’m an old man; I can’t even find me way down to the bore sometimes, can’t even find me fly-buttons – how the hell’m I s’posed to find Him? You get farther away from everything. Everybody. Get to be an old man an’ realise you know bugger-all. You can’t see anything clear.’

  ‘Or you can’t see for looking,’ Pell said. ‘Old men forget, sometimes. Their mind doesn’t tell them what body and soul remember.’

  ‘Body and — ?’

  ‘What do you ever know except what’s happened to you and what’s been promised to you?’

  Coupar sighed. ‘What advice?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you wanted advice. Thought I’d shut you up before you started quoting.’

  ‘I don’t need to quote to you.’

  ‘God A’mighty!’

  ‘Praying, eh?’

  ‘Get on with it, Bill.’

  Pell moved in his seat; the upholstery squawked. He almost regretted having to come to the point. He wished they could banter all night, two old men enjoying each other’s irritable company.

  ‘Pustling’s using the church somehow as a financial cover, a tax fiddle. He’s trying to get the church working on his behalf, buying land and developing, I s’pose. For the past year he’s been making these fantastic donations with invisible strings attached – only we were too awed by the money to think of strings, and in our greedy enthusiasm, thinking of all the things we could do – well. Not often, you see, the church has enough power to implement the things it knows should be done. Trouble is, more often than not, when you get the power – and money is power – it never seems to get done. Comes from being human, I s’pose. The powerless are sometimes more efficient. Anyway, I think he’s also bribing us to put in a good word for him here and there next year when all the media and celebrities come. You know, support his promotions, have our name up with his, get the church spruced up for showbiz. He wants us quiet and affirming. Angelus: the clean, honest, Christian town. Maybe he’s got some Americans coming from the Business/Bible Belt. I don’t know. Everything is unstated, of course. Everything is implication.’

  ‘So?’ Coupar asked, irritable.

  ‘So, I’m retiring in a few weeks.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I won’t be in the official job when it all happens. The new fellow’ll do anything he’s told. They train ’em to be public relations men these days: We Aim to Oblige. Darby’s his name.’

  ‘Geez, let him have it. Let some other poor bugger handle it.’

  ‘He won’t, that’s just it. And the church’ll end up another slave of the Pustlings. History all over again. I won’t have it.’

  ‘Who cares about history?’

  ‘Listen, if you had fourteen-year-old kids quoting the Crusades at you all the time you’d know what I mean. Anyway, you should talk, you’ve got history to avoid.’

  ‘Yea. I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?’

  ‘Now you’re the one quoting. Look, I made a big mistake, and I want to remedy it, if I can, before it’s too late. They retire me in four weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pustling’s had something to do with that somehow; I’ve got a few years left in me yet. Four weeks. Election of elders is in eight. Pustling’s been attending now for a long time. Now he’s buttering up the soft nominals and some of the senile ones to vote him in as elder. As elder he gets better control over his money, sinks more into it, and slowly breaks up resistance from the rest of the congregation. I mean a church is only people and – God knows – they make blunders. And I’m not going to let this one happen. So, I’ve been spending his money. He had an account in my name set up a while ago. I’ve cancelled it and taken the cash. So far I’ve spent thousands. There’s another couple of grand in the back – blankets, food, medicines, books, Bibles, toys, clothes —’

  ‘So you’re giving it out. Very Christ-like.’

  ‘No, very desperate and confused,’ Pell said. ‘Maybe even a waste of time, who knows?’

  ‘But it makes you feel good, and that’s enough.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, and it’s not enough, Daniel. Don’t come at me with that rubbish.’

  ‘So what advice, then? Dammit, Pell, get to the point, bugger you.’

  Pell moved about in the dark; Coupar felt the agitation in the upholstery. Transactions, he thought, a bloody nightful of transactions.

  ‘I can’t keep buying and distributing indefinitely. Pustling kind of owns the supply, if you know what I mean. And he’s catching onto my buying out of town. Pretty soon he’s gonna ground me altogether – I can’t spend and give fast enough on my own. I can’t set up any chain of distribution or anything; he’ll just break it up. So I’m on my own.’

  ‘The point, Bill.’

  ‘The point is, what am I going to do with the rest? Under your seat there’s a box of cheques, books of account and cash worth thousands. Can’t even bring myself to tell you how much. The point is, what do I do with money and records I can’t convert into goods, as they say. Wish I’d learnt a few things about money in my prime. Poverty is much simpler. What do I do?’

  ‘I don’t know, dammit, buy yourself a concubine, or a retirement house,’ Coupar growled. ‘Better still, buy yourself a decent bloody congregation.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Pell guffawed, ‘I’ve thought of that. Talk about temptation in the wilderness.’

  ‘You can’t beat Pustling when it comes to money. You won’t beat him.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Pell murmured. ‘But we don’t have to be beaten by him, either. Just because you don’t win doesn’t mean you lose.’

  ‘Shit, here you go again. Now you’ll bring it around to the Good Lord.’

  ‘It’s my business, Daniel.’

  ‘And money’s Pustling’s business.’

  ‘God and Mammon.’

  ‘There he goes.’

  ‘It’s nothing new, Daniel, and it’ll go on in this town long after we’re gone.’

  ‘So what the hell’s the point buggerising around playing Santa Claus to the down and outs for a couple of weeks. Why bother?’

  ‘Because for a while I can. And I thank God for it.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference in the long run.’

  ‘Not that can be seen, no. Because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. Sorry, I’m quoting again.’

  Coupar shifted and clumped his feet up onto the dashboard, hugging his knees, pretending that he did not see the moonlight gleaming from his too-shiny black shoes.

  ‘And who knows what effect you had in the winter of ’32? As I said, you forget. Specially those things unseen.’

  ‘Listen,’ Coupar said, ‘I’m going. It’ll take me near on another hour to get back.’

  ‘You don’t have anything to suggest, then?’

  ‘Jesus, Pell. You come round like a bloody simpering dog, you always have. You know your trouble? You’re a worshipper!’

  ‘Yes,’ Pell confessed.

  ‘Well, I don’t want your worship.’

  ‘You don’t have it. It’s respect you’re frightened of, because it demands responsibility.’

  A long silence ensued; there was only the breathing of two old men.

  ‘Will you do me a favour?’ Pell asked, at length.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I hide the money somewhere at Wirrup? It seems to be the only place that Pustling can’t penetrate. It would help. After it all cools down I could start using it again. Maybe you could even give me a hand with it. Some people’d take charity from you that shy away from
me. What do you say?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s a waste of time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Pustling already owns Wirrup. I sold it to the bastard a couple of hours ago. And the house in town. Coupars have occupancy until the day I die. He has the right to inspect at any time. I’m a tenant like everyone else, Bill.’

  A sound entered the darkness, finding its way about the cabin faintly at first, and then broad and deep and rich, and Daniel Coupar, breathless with exertion and emotion, realised after some moments of incomprehension, that it was Pell. He was laughing.

  Wind came at him slowly, but with a solidity that worried him, even in his stupor. Coupar felt as though the wind was prising open his ribs, invading him, and no hunching, he found, would protect him. His body felt beaten; his tongue was dry and sore and windburnt. The grease-flecked suit rippled on him. He bent the crown of his head to the wind. Tractor noise bludgeoned him. His cheeks were wet with snot and tears; his fingers hooked, welded to the wheel. Dark wings of sleep descended upon him every now and then – great, flickering shadows that smothered him for a moment or so, leaving him shocked and panicky at the wheel. The day and night cartwheeled about him, made him shiver and disbelieve: he saw water falling and bodies falling and bending, and faces – many faces – and his eyes burnt. As he bobbed eastwards along the lonely road, he felt the wind lose its chill and become warm as blood; he smelt dead land despite the stink of diesel. He moved: he was in yesterday and today, asleep and awake, dead and alive, numb and sensing all at once, and there was no telling between them; his body threatened not to inform him; his mind was at its own mercy; his soul defied him.

  He felt some flicker of recognition upon milling through the first gate at Wirrup; he heard the sound of wire coiling and scraping about the rear axle – the hissing sound it made – but he had no knowledge of the second and third as they bowed down before him, and when the tractor strayed wide across an empty paddock, churning across the dust, and teetered and tipped into an old watercourse deep as a creekbed, he was quite asleep.