Читать книгу Back to Bool Bool - Brent of Bin Bin - Страница 5

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I

First class on the R.M.S. Papeete (oil-burner) there was saloon space and various snug nooks where the brilliant examples of success she carried could lounge and talk in comfort as she threaded her way through tropic isles. It was a world of warm loveliness where coconut palms like feather dusters marked atolls hull down to port or larboard, where tropic vegetation green as emeralds and perfumed with frangipani or Maori flower wafted its soul on velvet zephyrs, and the rollers broke with musical boom on the encircling coral. Children shouted with glee as flying fish fell on deck or porpoises played leap-frog abeam. Austra, reclining in a chair, watching the dimpling seas through half-closed lids, was a splendid figure, white from crown to sole, her ruddy thatch gleaming like spun metal through a lace hat.

Also white from head to foot, and as splendid as masculine conventions permitted, was the attendant Major-General. Austra had his undivided attention for the moment. Judith. was not in evidence. She said to her leading man that it was enervating to compete with a typhoon. She was husbanding her resources and avoiding sun wrinkles, and the company modelled themselves on their exclusive star. Exclusiveness was more congenial to Judith's temperament. Reports were against there being anyone of intellectual kinship in Australia, but she must go through with the exile. It was unfortunate that Austra had clashed with her. Otherwise she could hold her own star-ship no matter what happened, excepting a General Election or an epidemic of flu. She regarded Austra on the level of the latter.

Sir Oswald gave Judith every attention when opportunity offered. His conventional mind felt that she should have a siren effect on him. He was nervous that he did not feel altogether bowled over. Surely he was not yet so old...

Austra (it was long since Mollye and Ossy) was on the basis of sisterly family friend free from amorous taint. Sir Oswald wondered how a man would approach her. It would be safer, he speculated, to allow Mollye to make the advances. By Gad! He would like to see that!

"Ossy-Possy," she beamed, "another day nearer good old Australia! I'm so excited that I have to hold my breath when I think of Bool Bool, and Brennan's Gap, and Coolooluk and Mungee, and all the places there, aren't you?"

"Yes. I've laid out my time so I can be at the Back to Bool Bool celebrations."

Lying on Mollye's chest was a slim volume. She read a few extracts. "Who says Australia has no real poets after that, and that all we can produce is wool and rabbits and prickly pear!"

"I'm glad I didn't have many like him in my company, or I couldn't have carried on. That sort of slosh is all right when there's no war on, but as soon as it breaks loose again you'll till run to the poor little soldier man." The Major-General swelled.

Austra lifted another volume. "He must have written when a boy. Listen to this about She-oak Ridge."

"Who is this fellow?"

"Richard Labosseer Mazere! Ossy-Possy. Who would have thought of a little tin soldier having a whole poet cousin."

"Nice to have one poet in the family. But there's no money in poetry that I ever heard. Look at Lawson and a few of those fellows--died paupers."

"Not so much money as in drapery or wool." The Major-General's fortune had been laid in wool, carried forward socially by law, and ripened to opulence by drapery and cheap labour. His father had had enterprise to invest in what its day was the greatest cheapjack business in Sydney. Social workers had condemned it as a feminine sweat shop, kit royal fortunes have been built by sweating women. The Grilling Bros.' strategy had been to employ girls under sixteen for half a crown a week, keeping a few harried permanent seniors to train them. As soon as the girls were of an age to command higher wages, they were dismissed and a fresh crop took their place. Poole père (it was the Major-General's own idea to be Mazere-Poole) had not advertized his investment. It would have been infra dig, in his old cliques, so quaint and old-fashioned they were. But the big shop in Peterstown, where people spawned as lust dictated, and lived in warrens, and bought "bargains", prospered and yielded higher dividends than did wool previous to the war boom. Grilling Bros. had long since gone up in the world. Labour legislation had done the decent thing for their employees. The establishment, now rebuilt, had nothing to prevent bishops from being associated with it. It was one of the mammoth emporiums of the top-heavy metropolis. The Major-General was proud of his connection with it. Mollye therefore made the reference with a smile.

"And it's not as profitable as singing in grand opera," he replied with a salute.

"Not if one had wool to back her at the start," said the practical and unconceited prima-donna. "I wish we could have an Australian opera. It would put Australia on the map as she has never been yet, no matter how wonderful our wool and rabbits. An opera to hold world attention and have a distinctive Australian character--ah, Ossy-Possy, I'd rather create the soprano role in that than be queen of any Continental country. Here's this cousin of yours; why shouldn't he do the book of an opera?"

"Ask him. If he's my cousin he must be a clever, obliging fellow."

"Madame, are you going to take me on at quoits today?"

"I should like to, doctor, but I'm immersed in an Australian poet."

"We generate them by the dozen. It's a kind of neurasthenia with us.",

She read a few verses. "Fancy the Major-General with a cousin like that."

"If I had felt like that about war I'd never have pulled through to...to..."

"To K.C.M.G.," said Austra with a twinkle. "But fellows like Dick might pull the world away from that sort of thing.

"You'll never pull the world away from war. If you do you'll have a worse state. A man who isn't game to fight for his home and family--"

"I don't mind the man who does his own fighting. It is the fellow who drives out the younger or poorer to the slaughter--"

"My old playmate has been associating with bolshevists," said the Major-General indulgently.

"Anyone who can sing like Madame can pretend she is a communist or a member of the basher gangs without fear of unpopularity," said the doctor. "But when it comes to real poetry you want to go to Sir Walter Scott or Kipling."

"I must get Judith to recite some of this at that mouldy old concert you are organizing."

With concerts and dances, the sea growing colder and rougher as New Zealand and winter hove above the southern rim, the voyage on the Pacific dwindled.

II

Even the T.S.S. Ballyphule rolling along in the direction of the Antarctic, and in spite of prolonged dirty weather, drew within endurable distance of Adelaide.

The five thousand miles of tumbling waste all to themselves, as though they had the copyright on the dreary route, was done at last. The sense of discomfort slackened as they came to the Outer Harbour.

A tank advertising one Noonan's hotel was the most conspicuous object as the foreshore came to view, flat, treeless and uninspiring, and that day swept by wild Australian rain. It was the coldest winter within memory, but it was mild to the northerners, who rushed ashore where the most inviting object was a notice-board to the post and telegraph office.

"Oh, daddy! All white men! No black men like Cape Town," exclaimed a child hanging over the rail.

"The Australian climate plays hell with the Nordic hide," remarked Miss Timson of the weather-beaten visages uplifted from the wharf. She appeared an hour later in coat and hat and bade good-bye to Dick. "I hope I shall see you again," she said, but gave no address to facilitate reunion.

Dick felt childishly desolate after he had helped her into the train. If he could have been rid of Armstrong and kept this pleasant companion! Wild driving rains beat upon them daily, spoiling the forlorn and featureless foreshore as a playground for the children and delaying the unloading of the steel. Day after day dragged by without the Blue Peter at the masthead.

"Now we've got to Australia where the working man is king," said the Pretentious Man, looking down on the wharf. "He won't work in the rain, and he won't work more than his eight hours, no matter what he is paid."

"I don't blame him," said a young man from north of the Tweed. "If you want to work long hours for no pay, you can stay in Britain. More power to the Australian working man if he can get along with something better!" Later in the day this young man returned to the ship with less of goodwill in his heart. He had gone to a dance where a native whacked him in the jaw, complaining that he was a bloody pommy coming out to lower wages when Australia already had more unemployed than could be handled.

Rumours of the fabulous wages of the wharfies and their independent attitude ran along the rail, where the migrants roosted like pigeons. It was convincingly asserted that £10 and £12 was gained for a forty-four hour week.

"It'll be like the yarns of nuggets at the gold-fields," said an old stager.

A more interesting rumour to Dick was that the ship was to sail each day. But they sat over a week beside the dreary mud-flats. He would have gone overland had he known at the beginning, but he was sticking to the ship as he wished to return through the majestic Sydney Heads. A poet's or a pauper's reason, and Dick was something of both.

They skipped through Melbourne in twenty-four hours and on up the coast where the blue inland horizon and the molten clear-cut sunset took him back to youth.

He stood by himself on the upper deck in a sharp cloudless dawn as the Ballyphule approached the Heads. There were the stones of Waverley, but no trees. He was repelled by the bare foreshore. Its nakedness hurt him. He was sick with the approaching ordeal of reunion after half a lifetime of separation. This was error. He worked against it, but it would scarcely yield. The Ballyphule entered the royal gateway. Where he remembered a few red roofs in bowers of trees many red roofs were now encrusting the points like vermin and trees were a rarity. Suddenly the sun turned all to blue Beauty released him from disharmony. Nearer and nearer...

Now they were right in. The plank would thunder down in a minute. A knot of those privileged to come on board immediately were inside the barrier.

"Newspaper men. But we haven't any celebrities, have we?" remarked Dick to an officer.

"This migrant business is being whooped up from, both ends. There'll be pictures of the arrivals."

The young men sped up the gangway with the élan of their calling. "Mr Mazere! Mr Mazere!" They scampered along the deck.

Had something happened the home folks? "My name is Mazere, can I help you?" Dick asked, turning towards them.

Cordial hands were thrust into his. "Welcome home, Mr Mazere.."

"Your sister sent us word you'd be here."

He had so wished to remain out of sight! He suppressed annoyance as unethical. Blanche was entitled to any little kudos accruing from his early efforts. He smiled gently at II ye young men.

"We want to hear about your work for soldiers in London, and what are your literary plans?"

"I haven't any plans but to see my people." Poised pencils were busy. Embarrassing to the retiring Dick.

"A family visit...but don't you think that you'll feel inspired by your return to give us another volume of poems?" Dick was bewildered. His native land must be a desert of Mediocrity and provincialism if five well-set-up young men had no better news than himself.

"There's nothing whatever to say about me."

"Mr Mazere, you mustn't be so modest. Anything you like to tell us will be an interesting story."

"Any story about me would have to be made out of your hats. Say anything appropriate," he murmured; and then suppressing his stage fright, "By jove, it's good of you to come and give me such a kind welcome. I'm not important enough to deserve it, but I thank you very much."

"Can you give us any kind of a message?"

"That would be bumptious on my part. I feel there are glorious things just about to break through. We are ripe now o produce full-sized genius that will lead us out of the bush and take its place not only in native regard, but among the world's best."

"Fine!" they exclaimed. Then, "We are buzzing off to the Papeete. She's just behind you, and there's a whole zoo of lions there. Your cousin the Major-General is one of them."

Dick discerned his father on the wharf, and Blanche...and such tall portly forms must be his uncles Labosseer...His heart grew large, as the French have it...a mist before his eyes.