Читать книгу Seize the Day - A M (Jack) Harris - Страница 9

I was born in Mildura in 1925. I never knew my father but I was told many years after our one and only meeting that, when my mother was pregnant with me, he had visited a brothel and picked up what was then referred to as the pox. My mother had left him and with my sister Bonnie, she moved in with her parents, Martin and Mary Roach. I was born in their small home in Mildura. I did come face to face with my father one memorable day, however, when I was leaving school and walking down the road with some school friends. I noticed a beautiful old draught horse, the sort used for pulling heavy loads of what was quaintly called night-soil but which I knew was shit, plodding down the road towards us. When it got close, a big man striding alongside the horse halted it, rudely picking me up dumped me on the broad back of the animal. To my astonishment he declared, “I’m your dad, son!”

I sat hunched up and ashamed on the huge horse, said not a word, and when the man, someone I could never refer to as my dad, had dragged me angrily from the horse and dumped me on the footpath, I knew I would have to give a bloody nose to the biggest boy in the group of school mates, all giggling and whispering that Harris was the son of the local shit-carter. I got the bloody nose, however, but it did lead to my grandmother getting Rocky Daniels, an old ex-champion fighter and the local milk carter, to teach me how to box. Many years later I was to fight, and successfully, in the West Melbourne Stadium.

I never knew the circumstance but my grandparents, apparently without any money, set up home on the Buronga Ridge, located across the Murray River, in 1932 when I was eight years old. I loved the area, the name Buronga was Aboriginal and I believed it meant ‘many stars reflecting in the water’. Centuries before, the Aborigines had roamed all along the water way, hemmed in all along its banks with huge eucalyptus trees which were ancient long before the white man ever saw them. On some, scars can be seen where the natives had cut bark from which they fashioned their canoes, made by removing a long oval of tough covering and then binding and shaping the ends together to make a bow and a stern. The craft were unstable and crude but they suited the lifestyle of the earliest people, for they were easy to carry and simple to replace. Many canoes must have been built over the centuries when black men squatted over long strips of bark, a piece of flint in their hands, while their women worked in the shade, watching them, as their piccaninnies splashed and yelled in the shallows. Then, the river and its many billabongs teemed with fish and shrimps, along with platypus and millions of water birds.

That is all gone now, but the river is broad and tranquil, with the sky often an imperial blue. The river in many parts is a turbulent stretch of water, fed from the far off Snowy Mountains but with lock gates at Mildura, the river slows and widens, providing the entire region and the irrigation fields with water sufficient to grow anything planted. The land is so lush that it goes a long way to redeem the harsh, shanty outline of the shacks on the ridge at Buronga, lying above the river like the rippled spine of a sleeping lizard. The ridge is at the far end of a desert and its only street is a wavering ribbon of sand drawn between the glistening boles of tall trees. But it is a good place if your needs are simple. Fish from the river, land and water to grow vegetables, plenty of shade to keep your chickens and ducks at peace and productive. There are lots of rabbits near and about while the large town of Mildura is just across the Murray Bridge for shopping and, according to my grandparents, an abundance of good cheap wine, both white and red, can be had from many of the surrounding vineyards.

My grandfather had been a blacksmith and after emigrating from Ireland in 1925, he had first set up at Menindee. Driven out because of lack of work he now set up again at Buronga. I never knew what he had been doing while he lived in Mildura but now with the re-built forge he soon had enough work to keep his family fed. There were plenty of draught horses used on the many vineyards all about and he was a skilled tradesman, gentle with animals, and he prospered, in a relative sense.

The others coming after the Roach family to Buronga slapped up their shanties, following the standard method of building: rough-shaped bush posts for uprights, hessian sides, later calcimined white, scrounged or stolen corrugated sheeting for the roof. And if it could be had, metal guttering that led to water tanks set beside the shacks where most women kept small gardens of hardy shrubs like oleander or fuchsia. Many also trailed climbing geraniums to blossom like hard-won trophies against the white of their bag walls.

I began working with Martin as soon as I was strong enough to wield a hammer properly. We were great friends and sometimes when the day’s work was done the old man would hug me close to his heart, then pretend to wrestle with me, and hold me near to his whiskered chin. Before I grew too big to be carried, he would take me up on his shoulders and carry me all the way back to our shack, the thick flannel stuff of his shirt smelling wonderfully to me of sweat and smoke and the sweet dung of the horses. I also came to know some of Martin’s history; it did not come to me all at once but sometimes from talking with him at the forge, at other times chatting with Mary after our evening prayers, and often listening to our neighbours talk when Martin held his court at the board table in the kitchen where his own home-brewed beer was served. It was actually brewed in Mary’s huge clothes washing cauldron and it was very potent, the full bottles often exploding, much to Martin’s chagrin, before it could be consumed. But what was drunk made people very excited and given to making long, red-faced speeches.

I came to understand that Martin had fought in what became the hopeless Easter Uprising of 1916, when a provisional Republican government was proclaimed. Only about one thousand men were available to fight against British rule in Ireland, and Martin was one of the ill-equipped Irishman who went against thousands of British soldiers. The Irish troops occupied the General Post Office and parts of Dublin; savage street fighting went on for several days and until the Republicans were forced to surrender. When Martin yielded he had been shot in the shoulder and had taken a bayonet thrust in the thigh, and a rifle butt in the face had broken his nose. The defeated Irishmen had tried to huddle together, seeking warmth, but the British soldiers jabbed viciously at them with their bayonets, keeping them apart. If a man fell he was brutally kicked and sometimes run through with steel; but after a short time the British troops were relieved by Australian soldiers who had served on the Western Front. Many were of Irish ancestry, some whose forebears had been deported to Australia for life simply because they had sworn a secret oath as members of Trade Unions, and soon overcoats materialised to cover many of them, and particularly the wounded and hurt.

Hot mugs of tea were also provided and the instant kindness of the Australians, so at variance with the brutality of the British soldiers, caused many of the Irishmen who had borne that British maltreatment in black silence to break down and weep. One good point of the whole mess Martin was often to declare, was that he was able to convince Mary that the family, including Eileen who was to become my mother, should emigrate to Australia. He had never forgotten the kindness of the soldiers who had saved his life, and he thought their country would be a fine place to settle, away from the troubles of Ireland, which had split into two self-governing areas, Northern and Southern Ireland. And so they moved on.

As time passed the sensitive relationship between Martin and me never faltered in the strength of its friendship, but the pact I knew with Mary was much more complex, for it was a thing of the soul, something set in the heavens she often spoke about. She was a willowy woman who carried a quiet but unquestioned authority in her bearing. Like Martin, she was a Catholic but broad-minded and clear- thinking, and not a devotee, as I was later to understand, of that part of the church which remained under Roman obedience after the Reformation. She believed in heaven and hell, in angels and devils, but she was practical about life and the manner in which it should be lived. Life and the happiness that sometimes went along with it, as she explained to me, was like fluid in a cup. There was a problem, though, in that there was not enough happiness to go around to satisfy everyone and to keep all cups full. As this was the case, I must understand that the time would come when my cup would not hold much happiness but I must believe, knowing that if I persevered, then our God, who had the power and control over nature and human fortunes, would fill my cup to the full once again. Of an evening she would kneel with me and Bonnie and we would say our prayers together, where over our beds hung a crayon drawing of Christ exhibiting his heart in red and gold and blue, the colours, she often told us, of love and pride and suffering.

With the passing of the years other families came to be scattered all about the saffron hump of land above the river, and all close to our place which had become the hub of many people’s tattered wheel. Being that sort of woman who had accumulated the sort of wisdom which books and learning do not impart Mary became, almost naturally, spokeswoman and arbiter for the ridge dwellers. Her authority was undisputed, and so she was able to fend off the authorities when they came looking for drunks, vagrants or petty criminals. She was able also to manipulate and pacify local council members when they turned up demanding payment of the crown rent on the land. Bonnie and I were often at Mary’s side, patient listeners to her well-constructed pleas for mercy, observers to her diplomacy. Given her experience as a nurse in Ireland, Mary was also medic to the ridge dwellers, administering to the sick, most of whom could not afford medicine let alone the luxury of a doctor, and calling on a lifetime of experience she gave succour and hope to many of the ill and lost in spirit. With Mary on the ridge it became home for a community, not simply a resting place for derelicts.

As the depression years lingered on, more and more shacks came to sprawl about our place and in the wind-patterned hollows beyond. The new comers were different to the earlier settlers, many being accountants, factory workers, along with drovers, sheep men and farmers. Elderly swagmen were frequent passers-by with corks to ward off the flies swinging from the broad bush hats and all their possessions wrapped in a bag or a blanket called their swag draped across their shoulders. A blackened billycan dangled from a hip and many were accompanied by an old cattle dog, normally a kelpie, often simply called Bluey. The swaggies were men of a low status, somewhere I heard it declared between the indigenous Aborigine and the immigrant Irish. Derided by many as thieves or vagabonds, most somehow understood if they called into the shack of Martin and Mary requesting hot water to make tea in their billycans and some hot tucker, hopefully beef stew for which they offered to cut wood or clean up about the place, Mary would provide whatever was needed. They invariably fed their dog from a spare bowl carried for that purpose, and would later head for the river bank to set up a camp, but Sergeant Murphy of the Mildura police would appear almost on cue and herd them on.

Murphy seldom exercised his authority on the ridge, though, and he never allowed his constables to go anywhere near the place unless he accompanied them. He knew well enough that whenever the ridge dwellers got enough cash for any work they might find in the vineyards or for labouring on the roads, they would drink and brawl, even run crazy. He knew that on Saturday nights in particular, the ridge would often be littered with male and female debris of fearsome fights and monumental drinking bouts. But having so much respect for Mary’s ability to sort things out with wisdom and tact, and being Irish himself, he never interfered with what might happen on the ridge knowing that when the Sunday morning sun aroused them, the fighters would generally shake hands and make up. They would probably have another beer, possibly having forgotten what it was they had fought about.

Bonnie, older and wiser, was a second mother to me, among other things helping me with my school work as my attendance was patchy, for I often helped Shoofty Vetch when he went out getting in his cross lines for fish that he would sell at Wentworth, paying me for helping him. I also worked in the Clemenza vineyards during the picking season and I was able sometimes to buy Mary a nice present as a form of repayment for her love and guidance. As well I helped Rocky Daniels on his milk run with Clarrie Simpson. I had a few friends about the place but my best mate was Clarrie, whose mother was what they called the common-law wife of a burly man known simply as Plug. Minnie, according to Mary, was the ‘latest mum’ of Clarrie, and that after his natural mother had left him, her violent husband never again bothered to seek the seal of church or state on any of the temporary liaisons he later contracted. He was a wild drunken larrikin given to beating Minnie and Clarrie when he was in a drunken rage. Clarrie would often share a cigarette he had stolen from Plug breaking one in half, lighting his portion and passing the burning match and my half over to me. Together in complete harmony we would inhale with what we took to be a natural talent. We never discussed the violent Plug or his bullying and besides, we were having problems in my own home, for my mother Eileen, when she visited Buronga from Melbourne where she was working as a housekeeper, had taken to drinking heavily. She often sat at the kitchen table drinking wine and quarrelling with Mary and Martin. Once, when I found a part empty methylated spirits bottle secreted under her bed and woke to her ask if she was drinking it, she instantly got up and pushed me so violently in the chest that I crashed all the way back into the kitchen stove. I sat in the dirt crying, until Bonnie came and took me outside.

When I asked Bonnie why our mother was drinking so much, even the spirit which was mainly used for mixing paint, she told me that Eileen deeply loved our father and she could never understand why he had cheated on her. Because she could not accept what he had done to her, she found escape in drinking. I then queried why our father had picked me up and dumped me on that horse carting shit, Bonnie reckoned that it was his desperate attempt to shame me and stop me from becoming what he was, and how something terrible he had done to our mother, had badly changed all of our lives.

Clarrie was several years my senior and I had started working on Rocky’s milk run with him, when I was twelve plus a few months. The year was 1938. We accompanied Rocky on the ridge at Buronga in a horse-drawn cart, delivering milk and cream to those who could afford it. Rocky loved to sing as he drove about the place, warbling ditties which for people living about the place were as much a part of his character as his ragged appearance. They were the kind not usually heard outside the Returned Soldiers get-togethers or rugby after-match beer-ups, but nobody living on or about the ridge ever took offence to them. Clarrie and I loved to sing with him while feeling very grown-up and worldly-wise.

We had to quit the milk run when the grape picking season commenced. We worked on a property owned by an Italian named Enzio Clemenza. He was an Italian who had emigrated from France, not Italy, after the first war, a fact which kept him from being interned then as an enemy alien. Some people wondered what might happen to him if there was another war, for it was known that Mussolini had recently invaded Abyssinia and now he was watching Hitler’s war preparation. It seemed that the Italian leader might join him in some conflict against all of us, which could affect Clemenza. On his arrival in Buronga, he had taken up land along the river and there he had grubbed out a place for his vines, grafting onto the small stems that came from America the centuries-old love of vineyards, all inherited from his native Italy.

The land Clemenza first worked was so poor that some of the locals said he would never make it as a grower. But he did, partly because he was sustained in his work by his wife, Rosa. Even now, after so many years in Australia, and married to one of one of the richest men in the district, she still wore her hair in the plain, severe style of her homeland. She also wore un-ornamented black clothing and drab shoes and stockings, hostages of her days of struggle when she and her husband never stopped working and planting. The way Rosa had often stood so close to her husband, with a black shawl over her head and black peasant stockings to match her ankle-length boots, was ridiculed by some. Only her husband had understood that Rosa’s stern Catholic God had burned into her soul a fear that what He in this good land had given might, in less generous mood, so easily take away in flood or drought.

The pickers came in their droves, and by their nature as well as their numbers disrupted the peaceful, easy-going rhythm of Mildura and the many small country towns about. They were not all bad people, of course. Many were hard working decent folk who followed seasonal work from North Queensland to Tasmania, from cane cutting to apple picking and grape harvesting. Clarrie and I picked with Bonnie and, working as a threesome, we had good yields; but it was hard, hot work and on Saturday we were happy to get away and attend the dance held in the Mildura Town Hall.

We paused just inside the door, absorbing the colourful scene, and it was obvious that nobody, stranger or otherwise, could possibly have lost their way to the Town Hall that evening, for the place glowed with lights, was surrounded with horse-drawn vehicles, and throbbing to the sound a large crowd makes. Sharp at eight o’clock Elsie Dunning small, sober-faced and very determined looking, struck the first chords on the piano set on the high stage and the proceedings were under way. She and her group kept up a monumental beat that should have brought down the lilies and cherubs of the heavy white moulding, while clouds of bright streamers and great balloons shook and swayed above the dancers, the balloons released among general pandemonium during the last dance of the evening.

Clarrie had the first dance with Bonnie but he was then shouldered aside by other young men who wanted to take her in their arms. I could understand why, as I thought she looked tall and lovely, encased in a blue dress she had bought for the evening from her first payment from the grape picking. I did not dance much, nor did Clarrie, as his partner Bonnie was much sought after by older men. But when the musicians had played their last encore we left the place and strolled down Deakin Avenue heading for home, Clarrie with Bonnie and me, all happy together. The air about was warm and musty with a hint of ripe grape aroma from the vineyards all about. Generally though, the place was sleeping, but somewhere a car honked or a motor-bike muttered, while behind us we could hear the tinny sound of a piano as some die-hard reveller tried to manufacture yet another tune on the high stage in the Town Hall. Peaceful though it all was, I knew there was also the danger of war in that surrounding air.

Clarrie and I had learned a lot about the possibility of war from my uncle Luke who believed in Churchill and his fears about Hitler and the Japanese forces. Uncle Luke did not quit Ireland with his parents but he turned up in Buronga several years later, flat broke, and asked if he could move in with his mother. He did not make the request to Martin for it seemed that the old man did not want him about the place. Luke did not move into the shack either, but built himself a bough shed out back. It was a single room, roughly square, with a roof of corrugated iron and walls of matted salt bush, constructed after a local building technique which ensured reasonable privacy, and maximum cool in summer. Its only fault was that it did not keep out the drifting red sand which sifted through it with every breeze.

Having nothing much to do once his accommodation was settled, Luke took over part of Mary’s responsibility as doctor for the ridge where the many quarrels from the growing population often led to cuts and sometimes even to muscle injury and broken bones. Luke once confided to me that he could scarcely remember when or where the rough practice had begun, but he had acquired a skill of sorts and an interest in minor surgery during what he euphemistically called ‘The Troubles’ in Ireland, which I now understood he viewed differently from his father. Mary had also once mentioned that Luke was a Protestant, one thing which naturally distanced him from Martin with his Catholic belief. But Luke also worked as a barber and this may have laid yet another foundation, given the necessity to staunch cuts, a familiarity with razors and scissors, a known knack in paring corns, lancing whitlows, and even tearing out carbuncles.

As a growing boy and later in my early teens, I came to understand that a great part of Luke’s concern for other people stemmed from his natural willingness to help and lend a hand to those in trouble, a trait I tried to copy. I also attempted to adopt and understand what Luke’s crude but practical measures did more for a raving drunk, or a thrown rider, or a terrified bush kid or mother, or a wandering sick Aboriginal, rather than any high-priced doctor’s care. To me, he was a big, smiling generous-hearted man who was always good to me, and over the years I came to love him. Sometimes when Luke had too much to drink, he would hold me close to his large stomach and weep. I knew it had something to do with the difference between him and Martin, but I never queried him on the matter but let him keep his secret in some corner of his untrammelled mind. It was a good mind, for he had studied under the Jesuits in Ireland but following some disagreement he had abandoned the priesthood, and turned to another, which Martin referred to as a so-called religion.

By ridge standards Luke was an intellectual, which was why he had become an accepted authority on the looming war. It was his opinion which made Eileen decide she would move me and Bonnie to Moonee Ponds, then an outer suburb of Melbourne, to live with our paternal grandparents. Eileen had some vague notion that if I got my Merit Certificate followed by some technical training, it would be sufficient for me to get a job with a large engineering company, which would be a reserved occupation and keep me from being called up for military service, should that war Uncle Luke talked about happen.

Some time later, happen it did, and Luke with Mary, helped arrange the party that saw Clarrie off to the conflict. The occasion was celebrated at our home and many people contributed to the occasion, the most generous being Clemanza. He arranged for barbeque pits to be dug and the place was heavy with the aroma of a whole pig and a large sheep being roasted over glowing coals of Murray River wattle, where four of Clemenza’s workers acted as cooks. They basted and turned, basted and turned, all the time being fortified by the strong red wine which Clemenza kept sending to them in a steady flow. Two of Clemenza’s horses which had dragged the barbeque equipment from his vineyards stood tethered nearby, and as if trained to give atmosphere to the occasion, they snorted while tossing high their magnificent heads and surveying the guests as they arrived.

I stood nearby watching the way Clemenza worked and the manner with which Mary welcomed each guest, for it was obvious the people she had invited were the guests of her home, as well as her heart, and she made everyone fully welcome. It was indeed a happy day for her because my mother Eileen had appeared to say farewell to Clarrie. She was accompanied by a laughing man she called Jock. He described himself as a man from Scotland now with a dairy farm in Gippsland. It was manifest that my mother was happy with him and she did not touch a drink of alcohol that night; she confided to me and Bonnie that her troubles were all in the past and we gladly believed her, hoping she would be happy at last. Everyone was at ease and comfortable that night, in that place and on the land about them which had produced much of the fare. The meat and vegetables, the fruit and the wine, and thinking about it, I glanced about me, noticing how the light was changing as the evening deepened. The glow of the fires lit the faces of the people about, and occasionally the rolling eyes of the horses watching them. I felt very much at peace and contented with life. Looking closely at Clarrie I could see that he had grown to be the tallest person at his party. His height made him stoop slightly, but not from any weakness, and while he moved slowly, he did so without hesitation. I knew that Martin could take a lot of credit for Clarrie’s blooming into young manhood, for one night when his father had been raving at Minnie and Clarrie, Martin had stormed into their shack and ordered them to settle the matter outside with Queensbury rules. Martin later told me he had watched Clarrie boxing with me and he knew Clarrie could handle himself, especially against a raving drunk. So it proved to be, and when Clarrie had knocked his opponent bleeding badly to the ground, Minnie had finished him off with a couple of well aimed blows at his head with a broom handle. From that moment forward Clarrie was boss of the particular shack, and he was able to openly express his love for Minnie, which she could respond to.

By this time many of the guests had done clustering about the glowing barbeque pits, shielding their faces and arms while sawing off the portions they fancied. Mary had lit several candles and kerosene lamps inside and most had begun to wander in to sing and dance. I wandered outside again to get another wine for Mary and I noticed how the calcimined walls, which looked so drab and grey in the sunlight, had been softened magically by the flickering lights inside. There was such a beautiful and underwater clearness to everything that it caught at my heart, making me sorrowful about Clarrie’s departure from Buronga the following morning. But I knew that if the war lasted I might also get away, but I doubted it for it was expected that Hitler would be beaten, or that he would seek peace. I was too young yet, anyhow, to join any army.

Just then the clear tenor voice of Rocky interrupted my thoughts and I peered through the wire-screened front door to see the ageing milkman giving voice to yet another ditty. This time it was the one that had to do with the sexual life of the camel which at the height of the mating season attempts to deflower the sphinx. Clarrie was then motioned forward to give his rendition of Sir John Moore’s funeral and how they buried him gently at dead of night, the sods with the bayonets turning. I stepped back inside as my mother organised a dance which was managed, even in the confined space, to the sound of Shoofty Vetch scraping on his fiddle; the old fisherman was a good player and Luke joined him, pumping away at his accordion, Rocky nearby doing his best on a mouth accordion. But the dancing was interrupted when someone took a wild swing at someone else and the people were so jammed in together that the laughing, slightly inebriated Minnie took one of the badly aimed blows. She had been jumping about with her back to the combatants, a full glass in one hand, when a punch took her over the left ear. She was sent flying, along with her beer. She hit the dirt floor screaming and the contestants were instantly shoved aside by an angry Clarrie before he went to his mother and with considerable strength lifted her clear off the ground, stood her upright and planted a big kiss on her mouth. Minnie blushed with a mix of pride and tenderness, patted her disordered hair, accepted another beer and glanced about her as the place went on pulsing with sound and movement.

But finally the ridge settled down one way or another for the night. It was an evening of desert stars and trees with the river below ghostly along in the moonlight. I was lying in my bed, thinking about my tomorrows, and those of Clarrie too. I knew most of the ridge dwellers would be sleeping, but the eternal things, the stars, the trees, the river, kept their eternal watch. I heard an owl hoot somewhere and like an echo, its call was answered. Those bird calls did not disturb the night’s silence but deepened it as I leaned over, snuffed out a candle on the dirt floor and I waited for sleep as all about me the ridge slumbered on towards whatever tomorrow might bring.

It had been decided that Clarrie and I would walk into Mildura that following day. The last man he spoke to was Martin who had been unable to attend his farewell party because he’d had pleurisy which had progressed to pneumonia. Looking down at him, I saw that Clarrie could not restrain his tears for he must have known he would never see this old man again. I wanted to weep also as I recalled how this now, frail grandfather had once carried me all the way from his forge, cuddling me in his arms, and tickling the back of my neck with his whispery chin. I could remember it all taking place, but it seemed now to have happened to an other small boy who might have been a child I had only heard about, and this now sick old man might never have been the one who had carried me on his strong shoulders so long ago. But I loved him and my heart ached to see him in this condition.

Martin managed to control the awful rasping sound in his chest as he muttered, “Clarrie, do something for me, will ya, son? Just slip ya hand under me pillow. Got somethin’ there for ya.”

Clarrie dropped to his knees, felt under the pillow and pulled out a small, folded piece of cloth.

“That’s it!” Martin gasped loudly. “That’s it! Let me show ya!”

Slowly he then unfolded a dark brown tie with a green emblem in its centre. He held it in his hands for a moment in a manner strangely reverent and his head was bent as though he was once again the altar boy of his youth, ready to place the stole about a priest’s shoulders.

“See that there shamrock?” he whispered, as if afraid to speak too loudly and spoil his exhibition of that national emblem of Ireland. “It’s on me army tie, you know! Given to me in 1916, it was. The Easter Uprising young Jack here can tell you all about it, he will remember. The English soldiers who cut us to pieces would have taken it, but the Aussie Diggers guarding us told them I could keep it. I reckon it’s been me lucky omen, you know? Got me this far, anyhow. But I want to give it to you, son, right now in the hope that it will keep you safe and well. Bring you back home, a hero too, if I know you?”

Exhausted, he laid back, his chest rising and falling in tune to the rales of his ragged breathing.

Clarrie stood up, folded the precious tie and stowed it into his shirt pocket. Looking at Mary, standing with hands folded at the head of the bed, he stooped to kiss Martin on the forehead. “I love you, grandad,” he whispered, through his tears. “I’ll come back. Just you wait for me.”

Later striding with Clarrie through the brisk morning I noticed how he sometimes put his hand to his pocket, feeling for the necktie. I was comforted to hope that somehow that little bundle of cloth from Martin’s past would bring Clarrie back to Buronga.