Читать книгу My Career Goes Bung - Miles Franklin - Страница 9

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The mail was left three times a week in a battered kerosene can nailed on the fence of the main road two miles away—that is if the mailman was not too drunk to sort it. He liked to keep any special letter a day or two till he read it and then gummed it up again. Other times he was content with tearing a corner off so that he could look in. He enlivened monotony by a lively interest in his neighbours' doings.

I was always hopeful of the mail. I don't know why, for the mail box only gives back the fruit of what is sown in it, and I had nothing to sow. It was at least a channel of possibility, a Tattersall's sweep that might throw up a prize, and I hungrily devoured the news of the great, reported in the newspapers.

There was no hope of any eruption in 'Possum Gully, it would need to be an irruption. There was no public road nearer than two miles. There was no stream to attract anglers, nor scenery for a painter, nor rocks for a geologist. My chiefest grudge against it has always been its ugliness. It is ragged rather than rugged, and lacks grandeur. We are too much in the ranges for them to be blue. They are merely sombre. The one glory that I dote and gloat on is the sunset. I love the sinking sun red as a fire between the trunks of the trees upon the hillside, and by running a quarter of a mile up the track can catch the afterglow of the grandeur of transfigured clouds on a more distant horizon.

Great was my astonishment one dull day to find a letter and a large parcel both addressed to me, and with English stamps. The letter had the corner torn off but not enough to divulge the contents. The parcel had been untied, but I was so surprised that I was not resentful of this. In all my life I had not received so much as a post card written by a hand in another country. I had no idea of the what and why of the parcel, but I trembled with excitement. I galloped part of the way home and in a little gully where the hop scrub was thickest got off to investigate.

The parcel was books. Oh, joy! Had old Harris gone back to England without letting us know? But they were all the same book. Each had the same picture on the cover. I had never seen so many of one book except school readers. And the title of the book was my spoof autobiography—and there was my name printed below it!!!! It looked so different in print—so conspicuous somehow, that I was frightened.

The letter was from a man I did not know, a business letter, as his name was printed at the top of the stationery. This gentleman wrote that herewith under separate cover he had pleasure in sending me six presentation copies of my novel with the publishers' compliments. He would be glad to have my acknowledgment in due course.

There in the hop scrub I faced the biggest crisis I have known to date. What on earth was I to do about this? What would Ma say? It was a shock that this thing written as a lark could come back to me as a real book like one written by a grownup educated person. I never in the world thought of an author as resembling myself, not even the feminine ones.

There was a dreadful fascination in peeping between the leaves. There it all was, all my irreverence about God and parents, and the make-believe reality that I had piled on with a grin in a spirit of "I'll show 'em reality as it is in 'Possum Gully." I never had a book affect me like this one. It was as if the pages were on fire and the printing made of quicksilver. Was this because I knew what was in it, or was it just plain egotism, which no decent girl should have? I wished now that I had written a ladylike book that I could be pleased with. If only I had known it would be printed I should have done so. Those poor lost girls who have a baby without being married must feel like I did. There would be the baby but all the wild deep joy of it would be disgrace and trouble.

I thought of dropping the packet near home so that I could burn the books one by one secretly, but the mailman had opened them. He would ask Pa. No, I must face it. Ma and Pa were waiting for me, as I was late, and everyone looked forward to the mail, though the crop that Pa put in it mostly bore no fruit but bills.

Pa reached for the packet while Eusty took old Bandicoot's bridle.

"What's this?" asked Pa.

Ma came forward. She and Pa and Eusty each seized a book. Eusty and Pa regardless of evening jobs, there and then opened theirs.

"Golly!" screeched Eusty, inspecting the picture on the cover. "Is that meant to be you on old Bandicoot? Bandicoot looks as if he is going to have a foal, and you look as if you are going to fall off and your clothes blow up!"

"I don't understand this," said Ma dubiously. "Some confidence trick man must have got hold of you. How did this book get to the printer?"

I explained that I had sent my ream of paper, when written upon to the GREATEST AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR, and he had asked me to let him keep it, and I thought it was only to read.

"Your father will be getting a big bill for this, and we'll be ruined. I wonder how much it has cost to print all this trash—it might be twenty pounds, or even fifty. You'll find EXPERIENCE a bitter and expensive teacher, but you must pay the price of your own wilfulness. What is hard and unjust is that I have continually to be paying it with you.

"This is like a meteor falling in the paddock, let us investigate it," said Pa.

Ma said, first things first; she must prepare the evening meal while I put the chooks to bed safe from the native cats: we couldn't all chase the shadow while the substance escaped us.

Eusty speedily arrived at his opinion. He had no impediment to arriving at his opinion on any subject. Old Harris said that Eusty was a perfect example of the cocksure Australian youth, possessed of the irreverence which resulted from lack of culture.

"I reckon this is a slashing lark," he grinned. "And crikey, if it doesn't get people's nark up, I'm a goanna with two tails." Eusty further expressed himself as full up of it, as it was only a blooming girl's book, and went about his jobs.

Pa wiped his pince-nez and looked thoughtfully into space and murmured half to himself, "Of course you are not to blame for inexperience, but it's a very strange thing. I am tremendously interested in what you have done, but you must not expect anyone else to be. It has just a local interest because you make things seem so true, even things that have no relation to anyone we know, that it is like a looking glass. I really had no idea that you had anything like this in your head. It would have been wiser to consult me beforehand; I could have saved you disappointment."

With his kindness to anyone in a scrape, he added, "You must try again and write something adventurous. Authors write many books before they succeed, so you needn't worry that no one will take any notice of you. I have sometimes thought of describing the old pioneer life that is fast disappearing, but when I came to put pen on paper something always interrupted, or the experiences seemed such small potatoes compared with the Spanish Main or American pioneering, that they could not carry interest beyond those who actually knew them."

Ma made sure that the pigs and fowls had been fed, the calves penned, the flowers watered, and kindling gathered ready for the morning fire before she read her copy.

She said she was relieved that it was not as bad as she had expected, for how could a girl without EXPERIENCE write a book? She said it was lacking in discretion to have rung in such peculiar characters. There would be unpleasantness with worthy people who would think themselves ridiculed. She also said it was unfilial to concoct an uncomplimentary exaggerated fabrication in such a way that outsiders would think it represented Pa and her. This was very mild and very handsome of Ma, but she is superb in a real crisis, though often irritating in a trivial rumpus. And what kind of a mad notion was it to rig up such a headstrong unladylike girl to be mistaken for myself? Ma said it was hard enough for a girl whose father could not provide for her, without handicapping herself with false reports. I was in danger of being put down as unwomanly, and men liked none but womanly girls. I shall never be a lady and poor Ma will never be anything else. So I plucked up to contend that it was womanized girls that men craved, and that it did not matter what men thought of me, as what I thought of them would even things up. "What nonsense you talk," said Ma, "You will find that in this world men have it all their own way. We won't waste any more time on the silly book at present. I only hope it doesn't involve us in any expense. The publishers must have little to do, or a peculiar taste. Put the copies away where no one will see them. A nine days wonder soon fades."

I sent a copy to Old Harris. He wrote that it was surprising to see such a novel issuing from the stately house of McMurwood—this alone assured my status. "But my dear girl, I am troubled by the tenor of the book. Where is your radiance, your joyous sense of fun, your irrepressible high spirits? The pages seethe with discontents and pain. Have you been living alone in your spirit, suffering as we who had deepest affection for you did not dream? This distresses me. I cannot recognise you at all in these pages. Why not set our hearts at ease with a companion volume in which you give us your bright and illuminating self?"

Pa said Old Harris was a wonderful man. Ma said how was a man wonderful who had wasted all his opportunities. Pa said that Mr. Harris had understanding.

"Humph!" said Ma. "All men, and the older they grow the sillier they are, understand a young woman, but a mature mother of a family or an old woman burdened to the earth with real griefs and troubles—thrust upon her by other people—could drop under their feet without attention."

Pa said that it was useless to quarrel with NATURE.

And that was the end of the book. We got on with the drought. It was a hummer that year and took all our attention.