Читать книгу The Thorn in the Flesh - Paul Wenz - Страница 8

Out on the veranda of the Tarindi Post Office, the thermometer has just reached 102 degrees Fahrenheit. The policeman is waiting for the coach to arrive: he mops his head with his handkerchief, and the light thrown back from the sun reflects onto his face the crude green of his helmet’s lining. Beside him, young Dan, his bare, tanned legs emerging from shoes laced up with string, mechanically flicks away the flies with a spray of gum leaves as he keeps watch over his team of four goats tied up in the shade of a pepper tree.

Further away, smoking his pipe, a swaggie is also waiting for the mail-coach, not because he is expecting a letter — he has never received one in his life — but merely to enjoy the diversion. And then, who knows?, one of the travellers might shout him a glass of beer: in this heat, what a pleasant thought!

Nobody speaks: the policeman is too hot, the youth has too many flies around him, and the swaggie has his pipe.

A cloud of red dust appears, rolling heavy as the smoke from a cannon shot: from it emerge four horses which, at this morning’s departure, were white, but which are now as pink as under-fired bricks. The coach appears in its turn, a berline suspended on thick leather straps, and when it stops in front of the post office, it finds itself surrounded by every living soul in Tarindi, for they are all eager for the spoils of the heavy canvas bag containing letters and newspapers.

In the shade of the hats, the faces are smiling however, and the coachman gets a welcome from each one; this old-fashioned coach is the only connecting link between the outside world and Tarindi, a small settlement lost in the plains, wondering sometimes what it is doing on earth, what are its role and its reason for existence.

From inside the red coach bearing the arms of the Queen of England alight a commercial traveller, who greets the local storekeeper familiarly, and a woman who shakes off the dust from her dress. Everybody heads for the only hotel, where they will lunch on corned beef and black tea.

At the bar, they all have a drink: they need it. The coachman gives out the latest news and informs the Royal’s owner that he is carrying the new housekeeper for Tilfara. “Those old boys know how to choose,” he adds with a sly look: “a nice bit of skirt!”

The publican, who also thinks he knows a thing or two, goes and takes a look in the parlour, where the lady traveller and his wife are seated in front of a bottle of ginger beer.

The housekeeper already has some information about Tilfara; this is confirmed for her: a good situation; Iredale is a clean-living man, loved by all in the district, handsome, 28 years old; he has a big property and almost 70,000 sheep.

“And he’s not married!” adds the Royal’s mistress, as if she saw in this voluntary bachelorhood an injustice, or even an insult, towards her sex.

Shortly afterwards, the lady traveller is shown to the dining room, where the flies, too, seem to be enjoying the cool, restful semi-darkness. The breadboard and the cake-stand are covered with squares of netting, spoons are brandished above the cups of tea so as to prevent the little creatures from committing suicide. But the commercial traveller is telling how he has seen much worse around the opal mines at Walgett. Water there is as scarce as champagne, the corned beef crunches between your teeth, it is so covered in sand, and the thirst that you get there is a suffering that you wouldn’t sell for anything in the world once you find yourself in a bar where the beer is sold for one-and-sixpence a glass.

The coachman chews slowly and drinks a lot of very sweet, strong tea; then he says to his neighbour: “Another thirty miles to go, Miss, and you’ll be at Tilfara: you’ll see, you’ll be sorry to leave me.”

All these people, often silent, love to joke when they speak. Nobody grumbles, despite the hardships, the heat and everything. They all possess a grown-up child’s outlook, a mentality built of patience which allows them to accept what comes and to expect what won’t happen.

Half an hour later, the red cloud rolls off once more over the plain scattered with trees like an immense orchard planted at random.

The coachman, his hands full with the long reins, speaks to the lady traveller: from time to time he points out with the whip a family of kangaroos leaping off 200 yards away, with the young joey prudently bringing up the rear. Further away, there’s a flock of emus running along, necks outstretched, in a series of grotesque strides that nothing seems to have provoked. In the pale blue sky hawks glide and crows fly past, their plumage shining in the sun.

The horses, zig-zagging on a track which winds round a dead tree, avoid a bush or a rabbit-warren; they hardly seem to advance at all, so slowly does the interminable plain unroll before them.

Miss Susie Brady, the housekeeper chosen for Tilfara, arrived at the station worn-out and covered with dust. A half day in the train, and two days in the coach, might easily have spoiled her good humour; however, she alighted from the old rattletrap calm and composed and returned a smile to the storeman and book-keeper.

For some days now, Sam had busied himself setting up a room for the newcomer; he had gotten used to the idea of her coming, reckoning that it was the best thing to do, since it was inevitable.

A small room at the end of the veranda had been carefully cleaned out, and all had been prepared as well as three bachelors could have done.

Sam had made up his mind to pay only a minimum of attention to the housekeeper; but he couldn’t help noticing that she was young and “not too bad”. This “not too bad” expresses, in the language of an Australian, an appreciation often bordering on the superlative, and this same Australian, on the point of dying, will tell you that he feels “not too good”. Is this the miner’s, or the gambler’s, superstition in him?

Susie Brady was, in fact, pretty good. When John saw her for the first time, he even thought she was too good and also too young for a household of bachelors.

The three men were strangely surprised to be seated at a table in the middle of which was set a bunch of roses. The table-cloth seemed whiter, the cutlery more shiny; even the salt-cellars no longer looked like a rabbit-hole dug up by a fox terrier: the salt had been carefully levelled off with the blade of a knife. Another surprise awaited the three of them; each man had instinctively taken more care with his appearance: the boss wore a tie, which he had never been known to do. Tom had on a waist-coat, and Sam had left under his bed a pair of derelict old slippers that looked terribly sloppy. All three ate little because they didn’t dare take a big helping from the dish Susie held out for them, and after pudding, when she had left the dining room, the men looked at each other, then sighed. Tom went so far as to unbutton his waist-coat, a piece of clothing of which he had never been able to comprehend either the aesthetics or the necessity.

Susie was evidently an intelligent woman; John and Sam didn’t have to explain much to her: she quickly took in hand the running of the house. The manager and the book-keeper, who were not used to city habits, were somewhat surprised the next morning when Susie knocked on their door and brought them tea in bed. The second day, Sam didn’t let himself be caught out again and prepared himself for the invasion by giving himself the careful brushing his hair required.

In a few days the house found itself transformed: the window-panes had been scrubbed and admitted more light into the living quarters; the floors and the furniture shone like new; even the mattresses, turned and beaten, had lost their thinness and gained in softness. The lamps gave better light, and the fireplaces, repainted with red ochre, were even more attractive at night, after the tiring day. In short, they all wondered how they had managed to live until then under the reign of Ah Sin.

News runs through the bush as quickly as in town, and Susie’s arrival did the rounds of Tilfara with amazing speed. The men whose quarters were a hundred yards from the homestead all wanted to see the new housekeeper, and many of them found the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity. Their cook, who had also become the boss’s cook, was somewhat surprised to see Dick, Harry and Sid come into his kitchen with perfect partings in their dripping wet hair. New hats made their appearance for no particular reason in the middle of the week.

Ned Berry, the boundary rider, seemed, more than the others, to have freshened himself up in order to attract Susie’s attention; she certainly noticed that his leggings were new and his spurs were shiny. But she thought above all of the possibility of getting herself a mount which, on Sundays, might remind her of the horse rides she used to love so much in Ireland.

She had left her own country two years before, not through necessity, nor through need to earn her living, but through sheer ambition. Susie knew she was pretty, she had been told so. Her father, English, a horseman, and a master of the hounds who often hunted fox in Ireland, had hoisted her onto a saddle before she had even begun to learn the history of England, revised, abridged and corrected for the youth of the country. Contact with this world, shod by the best bootmakers, mounted on thoroughbred animals, had instilled in Susie early on the desire to escape from the humble sphere into which she was born. The idea grew in her and became an obsession; she gave herself ten years to reach the rank of a free and independent woman, rejecting without further consideration the. possibility of becoming, like one of her sisters, the wife of a shop assistant.

Lady Isobel, who wore a monocle and was reputed to be the best horsewoman in the county, had hastened Susie’s decision with a simple gesture of her hunting-crop. The grand lady had admired one day the horse that the girl was riding, and on the spot, had changed her mount. The girl, white with rage, had led Lady Isobel’s mare back to the stable.

That day Susie realized that she could hate, and three weeks later, when they brought back Lady Isobel dying on a stretcher, she knew that she could neither forgive nor forget.

She took passage on a boat bound for Australia, and as soon as she disembarked in Adelaide, she had no trouble finding a position in a country where domestic labour is scarce, expensive and pitifully inadequate.

The owner of the South Australian saw at once that Susie had what it took to fill the position of barmaid in his hotel frequented by the squattocracy that came from Broken Hill and Menindie to have a break in the city. She had that ladylike air that the middle classes can easily acquire in England, instead of the barmaid s usual charms, rather more vulgar and sharp-tongued.

Susie had never tried her hand as a barmaid, but the publican explained to her in a few words the rules to follow: you had to be handy with the tea-towel and with the tact, that was the secret of the job. Have a smile for everyone, don’t cross those who are up to their fourth whisky, and don’t take their declarations seriously. The bar of the South Australian had a reputation for being classy: the bottle was offered to the customer and he was allowed to serve himself.

Susie took possession of the bar, looked after it like a piece of fine furniture and arranged her bottles on their glass shelves like a precious pharmacy.

She very quickly made herself liked by the regulars at the South Australian Hotel. She had nothing of the painted and dyed barmaid who attracts the sentimental drunks; her simple attire and her discreetly welcoming hostess’s manners had been favourably judged by the groups who came to ask her for a drink. She had soon seen a small court gather around her, holding trifling conversations with her about the weather or the races; she had a smile for everybody; but the broad mahogany counter had remained an insurmountable barrier.

Harry Sloan was one of the most faithful proppers-up of the bar; his office, unfortunately for him, was situated only a few yards from the hotel, and Sloan ran a business whose transactions were sealed as much with whisky as with ink. He bought and sold on commission all the quadrupeds of the country, cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, even donkeys and camels. He knew by heart the names of the big stations in South Australia, and those in New South Wales which were on the Darling: his clientele stretched far and wide. He was one of the most popular men in Adelaide, and this popularity scared him so much that he had a special bottle at the South Australian bar, labelled with a famous brand and containing weak tea which posed no risk of going to his head.

Everybody thought he drank a bottle of Black and White a day, and his stamina was admired. The secret of his imperviousness had drawn Susie to him from the beginning, and she never picked up the wrong bottle when Harry came to lean on the bar in the company of his clients. Susie liked Harry; he was jovial, good natured and always the same: a sort of companion whose presence made her feel serene, confident and unafraid. She must have imitated without realizing it the smile of the late Lady Isobel: she knew how to keep men at a distance without frightening them off. She had been able to observe humanity, which had appeared strange to her during those first days, rushing up to the bar before each meal like animals led to the drinking trough.

In the blue mist of pipe and cigarette smoke they talked about rain and grass: 2,500 sheep were sold between two gin and bitters, the races were discussed, bets were laid. They talked about mythology, but Poseidon was only known for having won the Melbourne Cup in 1906; they talked about history, but Trafalgar called to mind the winner of the Sydney Cup in 1909, and not Lord Nelson.

Susie made friends, she even made conquests: she refused an offer of marriage while wiping down the marble-topped bar with a circular movement, and the gesture seemed to underline, like the flourish of a signature, an irrevocable decision.

Despite the distractions of the city, Susie felt, after six months, a thirst for the countryside: the bush, which she didn’t know, attracted her. Besides, everything she was earning at the time was just disappearing into thin air.

One morning, while the bar was still deserted, Susie had dusted the 163 bottles which were reflected in the shelves’ mirrors. She had scrupulously cleaned the counter and had prominently placed three crystal goblets containing cloves, roasted coffee beans and cinnamon bark. Certain regulars still harboured the sweet illusion that, in the lasting smell of these spices, their naïve spouses could not detect the whisky, rum or gin.

Susie, satisfied at having finished her work for the time being, opened the morning newspaper and quickly scanned its columns. The front page always attracted her, with its lists of ships sailing to or from Europe. A column of classified advertisements offered loans of money at so much per bale; whole pages of them offered to sell, or wanted to buy. Still others wanted a groom, a coachman, a cook, chamber-maids. On one station they were looking for a housekeeper.

Moved by a sudden curiosity, Susie went out that same day to make enquiries. The agent told her about a large station on the Darling three days’ journey from Adelaide. The position offered was well paid: you had to take on the running of a household in which lived three single men. “All in all,” added the agent, “there’s not much in the way of entertainment, but the job isn’t heavy, you have good wages and no expenses.”

“Harry,” she said to Sloan as she poured him a measure of his special Black and White, “I have something to ask you. Do you know Tilfara Station?”

“Not half” replied Harry: “One of the richest on the Darling. A fine flock, beautiful wool. The owner, Iredale, a good bloke, quite young, not married and afraid of women.”

Other customers in the bar, skilfully questioned, spoke of Iredale whom they knew well. A good-looking fellow, whom the young ladies of Adelaide fought over eagerly when they had a chance to; but he came to town rarely.

All night long Susie dreamt impossible dreams about Tilfara and Iredale. She kept repeating these two names: both sounded so sweet to her ears. In the morning she had made her mind up: she accepted the position.

Six months spent behind the bar had made many friends for her; she was given three cheers by the drinkers, who proclaimed her in song a jolly good fellow. There were even some farewell speeches and good wishes which were greeted by “Hip hip hurrah!”

She hadn’t realized she was so popular: she was delighted at having made such a hit, and it went to her head a bit, like the glass of port that Harry had made her drink as a parting toast.

John Iredale had formed his opinion of her: a real find as a housekeeper. He nevertheless kept his first impression, a vague sense of danger, not for him personally, but for Tom or Sam. Could she be intending to take away from him a manager who was worth £500 a year, or even a valuable book-keeper?

She was too intelligent for her position, had hair that was too pretty, eyes that were too beautiful. She reminded you of a duchess who had put on an apron to help out at some charitable function.

She rode like an angel. John had lent her a chestnut gelding, and every Sunday, Ned, who had become her faithful riding companion, took her all over the paddocks along the river. The men who had considered her too ladylike judged her less harshly when they saw her in the saddle.

The boundary rider, who knew every twist and turn of the Darling, took her under the tall trees, and pointed out ibis and kookaburras. The river flowed sluggishly, forming innumerable bends which made navigation difficult and tripled the distance between two given points. Its pale blue, milky water was confined between two high, steep banks, on the sides of which tumbled out in confused and twisted clumps the thick eucalyptus roots exposed by successive floods.

One of the bends, more exaggerated than the others, formed a tongue of land, at the base of which rose a small hillock. Ned showed off this particular spot with an owner’s pride, drawing attention to the beauty of the trees and the play of sunlight among their thick branches and huge trunks.

Each following Sunday, Ned led her to the same spot: he even brought, tied to his saddle, a tin billy: they drank tea by the water’s edge as they watched the budgerigars and cockatoos drinking merrily.

Susie continued to fulfil the role of model housekeeper, and the almost luxurious comfort she had introduced into the household seemed to have been well received by the three bachelors. Sam had proudly showed her round his store one day when she had come to ask for some candles and some washing blue. He was rather proud of his shelves on which tins of jams, molasses, bottles of vinegar and jars of pickles were lined up with the meticulous art of the pharmacist.

Tom kept his own point of view for judging individuals, and he had declared her “a fine slip of a girl”, just as he would have said “a fine animal”, which for him was a sincere expression of admiration.

John was a man of the North, of a Viking type which had been tanned by the Australian sun. His features did not attain the level of beauty, but the general effect that they formed was attractive. Tall, thin without being skinny, he had good, broad shoulders; his back was slightly rounded as a result of constant horse-riding. His slow movements, his spare, calm manner of speech, gave no hint of his litheness in the saddle nor of the vigour of his commands when it was a matter of mustering a herd of cattle that had escaped from the yards, or of getting 2,000 lambs, panic-stricken at being separated from their mothers, to cross a creek.

Generally speaking, the men liked the boss of Tilfara, just as the previous generation had liked old Ben Iredale.

John Iredale appreciated all the care that Susie devoted to the household, but more and more she gave him the vague sense of danger that is associated with a loaded rifle kept in the house. A hello, a few words to convey some order, that was all the conversation exchanged between them; but he felt that he ought to have spoken of the way his socks had been darned, or thanked her briefly for having polished so brightly the silver frames holding the photographs in his bedroom.

She had never given the slightest sign of familiarity; she had kept her distance and had not overstepped for a moment her role as domestic. Once or twice, however, John had caught her big brown eyes staring at him intently, and at the same time distantly and almost unconsciously.

Susie had all sorts of little attentions for him, which she apparently strove to show as little as possible; but John discovered them one by one with increasing unease. He set off on a three-week round trip and inspected Tilfara from one end to the other. He came back to see his right-hand man with a real joy that he hadn’t often felt. Tom made a good report: nothing had gone wrong during his absence. Sam had no great news to give, except that the horse he bet on at the latest races at Kapunda would have returned him a small fortune if his jockey hadn’t pulled in the reins.

Susie proffered no stronger greeting than her ordinary “good day”; one might even have detected a nuance of sulkiness, of feigned indifference in all her dealings with John. Tom and Sam confessed to him in the smoking-room that Susie had been very quiet during his absence: they had even feared seeing her leave Tilfara, which was perhaps too dull a place for her.

After a few days, however, the housekeeper had regained her usual spirits and gave no appearance of being ready to hand in her notice. She continued to ride on Sundays. Ned would accompany her, envied by the other men on the station, who hadn’t yet been favoured with so much as a smile from the “princess”, as they called her. Ned was obviously proud of the distinction, for be ventured so far one day as to confide in her.

They were both sitting on a large dead tree-trunk; their horses waited for them in the shade, bridles dragging on the ground. The great bend of the river was once again the goal of their excursion. She sensed from the beginning that Ned had something important to share with her; she instinctively dreaded a confession, a declaration, but she waited resolutely for him to get to the point, this not being the first time she had refused.

With a circular gesture, the man indicated the curtain of tall trees and said, almost in a whisper, as if someone might have been eavesdropping in this deserted spot; “I have put in my request to the Government — 640 acres on the bank of the river — what you see around you. I think I’ll get the selection, one of the best pieces of Tilfara. Iredale won’t like it; but there’s a place in the sun for everyone. It’s just between you and me, eh? I haven’t told anyone yet.”

Susie received the confidence with a surprise that was less interested than the man was anticipating; she understood that he was going to become a landowner, but otherwise didn’t seem to see anything that might concern her. Ned hadn’t yet finished his story: he pointed out on the hillock, with a gesture that was already laying out the surveyor’s pegs, the future site of the house: it was quite close to the river while remaining out of reach of the floods. The house would have a veranda, and a garden with trees that would grow quickly in this sandy soil, thanks to the water that would be piped in with the aid of a pump.

Susie followed the branch which sketched out the plan of the living quarters, she thought of the other house, of the half-century-old garden where the orange trees spread their dense shade.

The boundary-rider fell silent for a few moments, then, sticking his spur through a dead leaf with a sudden movement of his heel, he said in a gruff voice: “Susie, what would you say to a property on the river? What do you think of the idea of becoming Mrs Ned Berry?”

A laugh as dazzling as a rocket, spontaneous as a spark, answered him, and Susie, between two fits which convulsed her, stammered and spluttered: “Ned, you’re too funny! No, really, it’s impossible!”

Ned took his defeat without a frown: he thought the laughter was a bit much, especially coming from such beautiful teeth. “All right, let’s not mention it,” he added, slowly erasing with his stick the plan drawn in the dust.

They galloped back to the homestead as if they had both forgotten the incident, and Ned, a fair player and a good loser, showed neither ill-temper nor resentment.

That night, the air was warm and without the slightest breeze. The silhouette of the orange trees closing off one whole side of the garden was like a sacred wood, a mass of mystery and dense shadow. You could make out the almost phosphorescent spots of their countless flowers; at their feet, the ground was white with their petals. The heavy, penetrating perfume lingered lazily in the air.

Each season spent at Tilfara, John felt intoxicated by this scent of orange flowers; it contained all the memories of his youth and came back each October, fresh, infiltrating, dominant for weeks on end. For him it was the harbinger of summer, the long evenings spent under the stars, the dawns thrusting up through the wide-open doorway of his bedroom a sun which seemed still damp with dew.

This perfume often gave him a headache; it stirred in him vague dreams which made him uneasy and paraded before his eyes strange hallucinations brought back each year with the flowering of the first buds.

He was sitting alone on the veranda; he had neglected to light his pipe in his strong desire to abandon himself to the intoxication emanating from the garden. The waves of perfume seemed to flow towards him like slow, invisible lava, penetrating everywhere, turning into a caress, then an embrace.

It was getting late, everybody had gone to bed; John, dozing in his deep chair, was suddenly aware of Susie in a kimono, standing motionless before him, her hair spread out over her shoulders. For an interminable second, he saw the woman’s eyes staring intently at him: he half rose as if coming out of a dream.

“I thought sir was sleeping... I need the key to the office to fetch some tincture of iodine; Charley has just turned up with his foot cut open by an axe.”

John went to get what was needed, picked up a bottle of whisky and a glass as he passed through the dining room, and followed Susie.

The injured man had just come 18 miles on horseback, with his right foot, bandaged, out of the stirrup. While the woman dressed the wound skilfully, John poured him a nip: the man drank it greedily, refused anything to eat, but asked for a pipe of tobacco.

The blood had ceased to flow; a bed was found for the man, who fell straight to sleep.

It was a long while before John could go to sleep; the vision was before him as if it had just come out of the little grove of orange trees. How long had Susie stood there gazing at him while he dozed in his chair? How long had those large brown eyes pored over him?

Then he thought of her long hair that he had admired from the beginning, but that he had never seen displayed with such intimate and glorious abandon. Draped in her black kimono, she looked like a fleeing princess on the night of an uprising.

John could indeed see in Susie’s attitude a hesitation to wake up her master; she had cared for the injured man with a dexterity made up of both natural tenderness and skill acquired in Ireland, where hunting accidents were frequent. In spite of that, he was scared by this fortuitous attraction, which was unprepared and perhaps unconscious.

He was afraid. He got angry with himself, accused himself of being a coward, felt he was being ridiculous to be alarmed by the shadow of a servant with her hair down and in her dressing-gown.

In the few seconds during which he had watched her, he had noticed her supple, silent walk, while the light silk kimono emphasized the movements of her body.

He had returned to sink back in his low chair, feeling his heart pounding and his whole being on alert.

He had wanted to get up several times, but a sort of cowardice that was unfamiliar to him kept him pinned to the canvas seat of the chair.

A scarcely perceptible breeze had risen; it played on his face like a long, fragrant veil. Something vague was telling him: “Wait, wait...”

Wait? Yes, he knew, wait for the woman to come back. She will speak... or I will speak...

He leapt up so hurriedly that the chair fell over and the noise broke through the silence so loudly that a dog barked in the night.

He went back into his bedroom.

And now he was still waiting, his heart beating so hard that it hurt; holding his breath, he listened, he listened for a long time. A shadow passed on the veranda, he saw it glide by like a phantom. Glass in hand, Susie was going off to fetch some water from the tank at the other end of the veranda.

After a short and restless night, he saw Susie again, exchanged with her the usual “good morning” and heard the satisfactory news about the injured man. He followed with his eyes as she walked away, and once again noticed her movement, the bearing of her head, her clothes, always spotless and well-groomed.

In the morning, as soon as he had finished his breakfast, Iredale got on a horse and rode straight to the Tarindi telegraph office, two hours from Tilfara. He sent a telegram expressed in the following terms:

MISS ROBERTS 43 NORTH TERRACE, ADELAIDE

READY TO BET EVERYTHING ON TRIXIE. REPLY. JOHN

The clerk, who was the oracle of the district for a hundred miles around because he was the first to receive the results of all the important races in Australia, sent off the telegram reply paid, surprised at not having received any tip about this Trixie, whose name he didn’t even know. John didn’t seem disposed to discuss with him Trixie’s pedigree or her form: he saw a ray of hope when John told him he would come back the next day for the answer.

The prepaid reply brought no satisfaction to the oracle of Tarindi, but John was delighted when he read:

BET ALL. YOU’RE ON A GOOD THING. BEE

The following day Iredale set off for Adelaide. In a hot bath at the South Australian Hotel, he left behind the dust and the stiffness of a long journey and then headed for North Terrace. He was glad to find himself in a dark, cool sitting-room, for what he had to explain to Miss Roberts required both darkness and coolness. Beatrice, who was Bee to some and Trixie to others, had been waiting for John’s proposal for two years. She was too sincere to tell him that it was “a bit sudden”; she contented herself with the thought that John had taken his time. Everything was arranged with a quite English simplicity. Miss Roberts let her fiance slip onto her finger a fine Australian opal as brightly coloured and glowing as a setting sun.

The Adelaide newspapers announced the engagement, and the Broken Hill papers repeated the news, which reached Tilfara’s ears before John got back.

Ned was the first to spread tidings of the event, and made sure he informed Susie himself.

She went to her room and fell onto her bed as if she had been struck by a sledge-hammer.

Then she suddenly knew how much she loved John. She loved everything that was his, she even loved the smell of his homespun clothing, which smelled of both peat and vetiver. Many a time she had deliberately cleaned his room at an unhurried pace, looking long at the portraits which hung on the wall in their rococo frames and at the photographs which were on the table. There was one photograph in a silver frame: that must be the fiancee.

That morning, she had once again changed the flowers, expecting his return at any moment. She realized everything that he meant to her, how little she meant to him. She saw a kind of gulf between them, deep and impassable.

Ned must know, must speak the truth! She suddenly felt something like a burning tide rise in her heart, a bitterness at having suffered fruitlessly in empty hopes, at having to suffer henceforth beyond all hope.

Tears flowed from her eyes; but hatred, like a red-hot iron, dried them on her cheeks. She wanted at first to quit Tilfara without giving notice; to run away. Then she reflected that her departure would allow things to take their course. She wanted John to suffer, she wanted the woman whose photograph was enshrined in the bedroom to suffer also, she wanted Tilfara to have its share of suffering.

Her spite seemed, in its feverish agitation, to well up with all sorts of ideas. She thought of Ned, of his land, of his application: to live next door to them, to plague them in every way possible. She began to laugh out loud, for hatred, like love, promises infinite satisfactions.

Susie went off to find Ned. She read in his eyes that he still desired her.

“When you get title to your land, Ned, if you still want me...”

“I’ll probably have it within two weeks,” replied the boundary-rider.

Trixie Roberts had many friends in Adelaide, so she received many congratulations and good wishes as soon as the news of her engagement was known. She received many letters and visits as a result, and for a whole week she had to wield the tea-pot and pass the sugar as she had never done before in her life.

Among the friends who came to congratulate her, she managed to distinguish between those who were sincerely happy at the news and those who could not completely conceal a certain envy. In the voices of some she heard: “You are lucky and I am happy for you”; she interpreted what the others said as: “You have the luck that I should have had.” The nuance was barely perceptible, but could be seen in the brightness of eyes which can only lie with the help of tears.

Mrs Richard Smith came to Trixie’s house one afternoon when the tea was growing cold and the sandwiches and cakes were no more than a few crumbs at the bottom of their plates, Mrs Richard Smith often arrived late at her friends’ teas, for she was so busy with her charity work! She was president of several societies which protected poor people, children and animals: she looked after shelters for the indigent, nurseries for children, and a home for abandoned cats. In short, charity had taken over nearly all of Mrs Smith’s time.

The President of the A.B.C.D. (the Adelaide Benevolent Charity Delegation) had a rare elocutionary gift and possessed a mine of all sorts of information, often of an unexpected kind. The President of the Home for Cats had a wicked tongue.

Having assured Trixie that she preferred her tea lukewarm and strong, that she really didn’t want anything to eat, she rhapsodized over the happy event. John Iredale was well known in Adelaide; he came there scarcely once a year, but he was well liked.

“Only the day before yesterday, somebody told me that a barmaid from the South Australian, very pretty it seems...”

“Yes,” Trixie said simply, “John told me all about that; she has been his housekeeper for the past three months, and what’s more, a perfect housekeeper. John finds only one fault in her: she is too pretty and too much the lady.”

Mrs Smith gave a little frown as if someone had just taken from her a sandwich that she was about to put into her mouth. But she hadn’t finished yet.

“Her name is Susie; she is much missed in the bar of the South Australian, everyone is astonished that she has stayed more than a fortnight buried away on the banks of the Darling. A woman who was surrounded by admirers, who is really beautiful, apparently.”

“Fortunately, Mrs Smith, I don’t know what jealousy is. Until now I have never felt a need to resort to it in order to obtain thrills that the imagination dispenses like an automatic machine. I think jealousy is above all stupid; jealous people are not all imbeciles, but I think that almost all stupid people are jealous.”

“This barmaid,” added Mrs Smith, who hadn’t exhausted her topic, “had a very congenial send-off. Speeches were made, they gave her presents, and I must add” (Mrs Smith had a hint of regret in her voice) “that no-one ever spoke any ill of this woman. You know, these men are all the same; with a pretty face, a barmaid or, a... housekeeper is as good as a queen. We’ll never change them. The Good Lord created us second because He saw that He had made a mistake with the first specimen.” Trixie remained serene, even smiled at this account of Creation. Mrs Smith had a vague notion that the pebble she had cast on the calm waters had made a very small splash and its ripples had quickly disappeared.