Chapter 5
They went to Mullumbimby by the two o'clock train from Sydney on the Friday afternoon, Jack having managed to get a day off for the occasion. He was a sort of partner in the motor–works place where he was employed, so it was not so difficult. And work was slack.
Harriet and Victoria were both quite excited. The Somers had insisted on packing one basket of food for the house, and Victoria had brought some dainties as well. There were few people in the train, so they settled themselves right at the front, in one of those long open second–class coaches with many cane seats and a passage down the middle.
"This is really for the coal miners," said Victoria. "You'll see they'll get in when we get further down."
She was rather wistful, after the vague coolness that had subsisted between the two households. She was so happy that Somers and Harriet were coming with her and Jack. They made her feel—she could hardly describe it—but so safe, so happy and safe. Whereas often enough, in spite of the stalwart Jack, she felt like some piece of fluff blown about on the air, now that she was taken from her own home. With Somers and Harriet she felt like a child that is with its parents, so lovely and secure, without any need ever to look round. Jack was a man, and everything a man should be, in her eyes. But he was also like a piece of driftwood drifting on the strange unknown currents in an unexplored nowhere, without any place to arrive at. Whereas to Victoria, Harriet seemed to be rooted right in the centre of everything, at last she could come to perfect rest in her, like a bird in a tree that remains still firm when the floods are washing everything else about.
If only Somers would let her rest in Harriet and him. But he seemed to have a strange vindictiveness somewhere in his nature, that turned round on her and terrified her worse than before. If he would only be fond of her, that was what she wanted. If he would only be fond of her, and not ever really leave her. Not love. When she thought of lovers she thought of something quite different. Something rather vulgar, rather common, more or less naughty. Ah no, he wasn't like that. And yet—since all men are potential lovers to every woman—wouldn't it be terrible if he asked for love. Terrible—but wonderful. Not a bit like Jack—not a bit. Would Harriet mind? Victoria looked at Harriet with her quick, bright, shy brown eyes. Harriet looked so handsome and distant: she was a little afraid of her. Not as she was afraid of Somers. Afraid as one woman is of another fierce woman. Harriet was fierce, Victoria decided. Somers was demonish, but could be gentle and kind.
It came on to rain, streaming down the carriage windows. Jack lit a cigarette, and offered one to Harriet. She, though she knew Somers disliked it intensely when she smoked, particularly in a public place like this long, open railway carriage, accepted, and sat by the closed window smoking.
The train ran for a long time through Sydney, or the endless outsides of Sydney. The town took almost as much leaving as London does. But it was different. Instead of solid rows of houses, solid streets like London, it was mostly innumerable detached bungalows and cottages, spreading for great distances, scattering over hills, low hills and shallow inclines. And then waste marshy places, and old iron, and abortive corrugated iron "works"—all like the Last Day of creation, instead of a new country. Away to the left they saw the shallow waters of the big opening where Botany Bay is: the sandy shores, the factory chimneys, the lonely places where it is still Bush. And the weary half established straggling of more suburb.
"Como", said the station sign. And they ran on bridges over two arms of water from the sea, and they saw what looked like a long lake with wooded shores and bungalows: a bit like Lake Como, but oh, so unlike. That curious sombreness of Australia, the sense of oldness, with the forms all worn down low and blunt, squat. The squat–seeming earth. And then they ran at last into real country, rather rocky, dark old rocks, and sombre bush with its different pale–stemmed dull–leaved gumtrees standing graceful, and various healthy–looking undergrowth, and great spiky things like zuccas. As they turned south they saw tree–ferns standing on one knobbly leg among the gums, and among the rocks ordinary ferns and small bushes spreading in glades and up sharp hill–slopes. It was virgin bush, and as if unvisited, lost, sombre, with plenty of space, yet spreading grey for miles and miles, in a hollow towards the west. Far in the west, the sky having suddenly cleared, they saw the magical range of the Blue Mountains. And all this hoary space of bush between. The strange, as it were, INVISIBLE beauty of Australia, which is undeniably there, but which seems to lurk just beyond the range of our white vision. You feel you can't SEE—as if your eyes hadn't the vision in them to correspond with the outside landscape. For the landscape is so unimpressive, like a face with little or no features, a dark face. It is so aboriginal, out of our ken, and it hangs back so aloof. Somers always felt he looked at it through a cleft in the atmosphere; as one looks at one of the ugly–faced, distorted aborigines with his wonderful dark eyes that have such an incomprehensible ancient shine in them, across gulfs of unbridged centuries. And yet, when you don't have the feeling of ugliness or monotony, in landscape or in nigger, you get a sense of subtle, remote, FORMLESS beauty more poignant than anything ever experienced before.
"Your wonderful Australia!" said Harriet to Jack. "I can't tell you how it moves me. It feels as if no one had ever loved it. Do you know what I mean? England and Germany and Italy and Egypt and India—they've all been loved so passionately. But Australia feels as if it had never been loved, and never come out into the open. As if man had never loved it, and made it a happy country, a bride country—or a mother country."
"I don't suppose they ever have," said Jack.
"But they will?" asked Harriet. "Surely they will. I feel that if I were Australian, I should love the very earth of it—the very sand and dryness of it—more than anything."
"Where should we poor Australian wives be?" put in Victoria, leaning forward her delicate, frail face—that reminded one of a flickering butterfly in its wavering.
"Yes," said Harriet meditatively, as if they had to be considered, but were not as important as the other question.
"I'm afraid most Australians come to hate the Australian earth a good bit before they're done with it," said Jack. "If you call the land a bride, she's the sort of bride not many of us are willing to tackle. She drinks your sweat and your blood, and then as often as not lets you down, does you in."
"Of course," said Harriet, "it will take time. And of course a LOT of love. A lot of fierce love, too."
"Let's hope she gets it," said Jack. "They treat the country more like a woman they pick up on the streets than a bride, to my thinking."
"I feel I could LOVE Australia," declared Harriet.
"Do you feel you could love an Australian?" asked Jack, very much to the point.
"Well," said Harriet, arching her eyes at him, "that's another matter. From what I see of them I rather doubt it," she laughed, teasing him.
"I should say you would. But it's no good loving Australia if you can't love the Australian."
"Yes, it is. If as you say Australia is like the poor prostitute, and the Australian just bullies her to get what he can out of her and then treats her like dirt."
"It's a good deal like that," said Jack.
"And then you expect me to approve of you."
"Oh, we're not all alike, you know."
"It always seems to me," said Somers, "that somebody will have to water Australia with their blood before it's a real man's country. The soil, the very plants seem to be waiting for it."
"You've got a lurid imagination, my dear man," said Jack.
"Yes, he has," said Harriet. "He's always so extreme."
The train jogged on, stopping at every little station. They were near the coast, but for a long time the sea was not in sight. The land grew steeper—dark, straight hills like cliffs, masked in sombre trees. And then the first plume of colliery smoke among the trees on the hill–face. But they were little collieries, for the most part, where the men just walked into the face of the hill down a tunnel, and they hardly disfigured the land at all. Then the train came out on the sea—lovely bays with sand and grass and trees, sloping up towards the sudden hills that were like a wall. There were bungalows dotted in most of the bays. Then suddenly more collieries, and quite a large settlement of bungalows. From the train they looked down on many many pale–grey zinc roofs, sprinkled about like a great camp, close together, yet none touching, and getting thinner towards the sea. The chimneys were faintly smoking, there was a haze of smoke and a sense of home, home in the wilds. A little way off, among the trees, plumes of white steam betrayed more collieries.
A bunch of schoolboys clambered into the train with their satchels, at home as schoolboys are. And several black colliers, with tin luncheon boxes. Then the train ran for a mile and a half, to stop at another little settlement. Sometimes they stopped at beautiful bays in a hollow between hills, and no collieries, only a few bungalows. Harriet hoped Mullumbimby was like that. She rather dreaded the settlements with the many many iron roofs, and the wide, unmade roads of sandy earth running between, down to the sea, or skirting swamp–like little creeks.
The train jogged on again—they were there. The place was half and half. There were many tin roofs—but not SO many. There were the wide, unmade roads running so straight as it were to nowhere, with little bungalow homes half–lost at the side. But they were pleasant little bungalow homes. Then quite near, inland, rose a great black wall of mountain, or cliff, or tor, a vast dark tree–covered tor that reminded Harriet of Matlock, only much bigger. The town trailed down from the foot of this mountain towards the railway, a huddle of grey and red–painted iron roofs. Then over the railway, towards the sea, it began again in a scattered, spasmodic fashion, rather forlorn bungalows and new "stores" and fields with rail fences, and more bungalows above the fields, and more still running down the creek shallows towards the hollow sea, which lay beyond like a grey mound, the strangest sight Harriet had ever seen.
Next to the railway was a field, with men and youths playing football for their lives. Across the road from the football field was a barber's shop, where a man on horseback was leaning chattering to the barber, a young intelligent gentleman in eye–glasses. And on the broad grass of the roadside grew the trees with the bright scarlet flowers perching among the grey twigs.
Going towards the sea they were going away from the town that slid down at the bush–covered foot of the dark tor. The sun was just sinking to this great hill face, amid a curdle of grey–white clouds. The faintest gold reflected in the more open eastern sky, in front. Strange and forlorn, the wide sandy–rutted road with the broad grass margin and just one or two bungalows. "Verdun" was the first, a wooden house painted dark red. But some had quite wide grass round them, inside their fences, like real lawns.
Victoria had to dart to the house–agent for the key. The other three turned to the left, up another wide road cut in the almost nothingness, past two straying bungalows perched on brick supports—then across a piece of grass–land as yet unoccupied, where small boys were kicking a football—then round the corner of another new road, where water lay in a great puddle so that they had to climb on to the grass beside the fence of a big red–painted bungalow. Across the road was a big bungalow built with imitation timbered walls and a red corrugated roof and red huge water–tanks. The sea roared loudly, but was not in sight. Next along the forlorn little road nestled a real bright red–tiled roof among a high bushy hedge, and with a white gate.
"I do hope it's that," said Harriet to herself. She was so yearning to find another home.
Jack stood waiting at the corner on the tall bit of grassy land above the muddy, cut–out road. There came Victoria running in her eager way across the open space up the slight incline. Evening was beginning to fall.
"Got 'em?" called Jack.
"Yes. Mrs. Wynne was just washing herself, so I had to wait a minute." Victoria came panting up.
"Is that it?" said Harriet timidly at last, pointing to the bright red roof.
"Yes, that's it," said Victoria, pleased and proprietary. A boy from the big red bungalow called to ask if he should bring milk across. The big red bungalow was a dairy. But Harriet followed eagerly on Jack's footsteps across the road. She peeped over the white gate as he unfastened it. A real lovely brick house, with a roof of bright red tiles coming down very low over dark wooden verandahs, and huge round rain–tanks, and a bit of grass and a big shed with double doors. Joy! The gate was open, and she rushed in, under the tall, over–leaning hedge that separated them from the neighbour, and that reached almost to touch the side of her house. A wooden side verandah with bedsteads—old rusty bedsteads patched with strip and rope—and then grass, a little front all of grass, with loose hedges on either side—and the sea, the great Pacific right there and rolling in huge white thunderous rollers not forty yards away, under her grassy platform of a garden. She walked to the edge of the grass. Yes, just down the low cliff, really only a bank, went her own little path, as down a steep bank, and then was smooth yellow sand, and the long sea swishing up its incline, and rocks to the left, and incredible long rollers furling over and crushing down on the shore. At her feet! At her very feet, the huge rhythmic Pacific.
She turned to the house. There it crouched, with its long windows and its wide verandah and its various slopes of low, red–tiled roofs. Perfect! Perfect! The sun had gone down behind the great front of black mountain wall which she could still see over the hedge. The house inside was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed. Somebody switched on a light. Long cottage windows, and a white ceiling with narrow dark beams. She rushed indoors. Once more in search of a home, to be alone with Lovat, where he would be happy. How the sea thundered!
Harriet liked the house immensely. It was beautifully built, solid, in the good English fashion. It had a great big room with dark jarrah timbering on the roof and the walls: it had a dark jarrah floor, and doors, and some solid, satisfactory jarrah furniture, a big, real table and a sideboard and strong square chairs with cane seats. The Lord had sent her here, that was certain.
And how delighted Victoria was with her raptures. Jack whipped his coat off and went to the shed for wood and coal, and soon had a lavish fire in the open hearth. A boy came with milk, and another with bread and fresh butter and eggs, ordered by Mrs. Wynne. The big black kettle was on the fire. And Harriet took Lovat's arm, she was so moved.
Through the open seaward door, as they sat at the table, the near sea was glimmering pale and greenish in the sunset, and breaking with a crash of foam right, as it seemed, under the house. If the house had not stood with its little grassy garden some thirty or forty feet above the ocean, sometimes the foam would have flown to the doorstep, or to the steps of the loggia. The great sea roaring at one's feet!
After the evening meal the women were busy making up beds and tidying round, while the men sat by the fire. Jack was quiet, he seemed to brood, and only smoke abstractedly, vaguely. He just sucked his pipe and stared in the fire, while the sea boomed outside, and the voices of the women were heard eager in the bedrooms. When one of the doors leading on to the verandahs was opened, the noise of the sea came in frightening, like guns.
The house had been let for seven months to a man and wife with eleven children. When Somers got up at sunrise, in the morning, he could well believe it. But the sun rose golden from a low fume of haze in the north–eastern sea. The waves rolled in pale and bluey, glass–green, wonderfully heavy and liquid. They curved with a long arch, then fell in a great hollow thud, and a spurt of white foam and a long, soft, snow–pure rush of forward flat foam. Somers watched the crest of fine, bristling spume fly back from the head of the waves as they turned and broke. The sea was all yellow–green light.
And through the light came a low, black tramp steamer, lurching up and down on the waves, disappearing altogether in the lustrous water, save for her bit of yellow–banded funnel and her mast–tips: then emerging like some long, out–of–shape dolphin on a wave–top. She was like some lost mongrel running over a furrowed land. She bellowed and barked forlornly, and hung round on the up–and–down waves.
Somers saw what he wanted. At the south end of the shallow bay was a long, high jetty straddling on great treetrunk poles out on to the sea, and carrying a long line of little red coal–trucks, the sort that can be tipped up. Beyond the straddling jetty was a spit of low, yellow–brown land, grassy, with a stiff little group of trees like ragged Noah's ark trees, and further in, a little farm–place with two fascinating big gum–trees that stuck out their clots of foliage in dark tufts at the end of slim, up–starting branches.
But the lines from the jetty ran inland for two hundred yards, to where a tiny colliery was pluming steam and smoke from beyond a marsh–like little creek. The steamer wanted to land. She saw the line of little trucks full and ready. She bellowed like a miserable cow, sloping up and down and turning round on the waters of the bay. Near the jetty the foam broke high on some sheltering rocks. The steamer seemed to watch yearningly, like a dog outside a shut door. A little figure walked along the jetty, slowly, unconcernedly. The steamer bellowed again. The figure reached the end of the jetty, and hung out a red flag. Then the steamer shouted no more, but slowly, fearfully turned and slunk up and down the waves back towards Sydney.
The jetty—the forlorn pale–brown grassy bank running out to sea, with the clump of sharp, hard–pointed dark conifers, trees of the southern hemisphere, stiff and mechanical; then the foreshore with yellow sand and rollers; then two bungalows, and a bit of waste ground full of tins; that was the southern aspect. Northwards, next door, was the big imitation black and white bungalow, with a tuft of wind–blown trees and half–dead hedge between it and the Somers' house. That was north. And the sun was already sloping upwards and northwards. It gave Somers an uneasy feeling, the northward travelling of the climbing sun: as if everything had gone wrong. Inland, lit up dark grey with its plumy trees in the morning light, was the great mountain or tor, with bare, greying rock showing near the top, and above the ridge–top the pure blue sky, so bright and absolutely unsullied, it was always a wonder. There was an unspeakable beauty about the mornings, the great sun from the sea, such a big, untamed, proud sun, rising into a sky of such tender delicacy, blue, so blue, and yet so frail that even blue seems too coarse a colour to describe it, more virgin than humanity can conceive; the land inward lit up, the prettiness of many painted bungalows with tin roofs clustering up the low up–slopes of the grey–treed bush; and then rising like a wall, facing the light and still lightless, the tor face, with its high–up rim so grey, having tiny trees feathering against the most beautiful frail sky in the world. Morning!
But Somers turned to the house. It stood on one of the regulation lots, probably fifty feet by a hundred and fifty. The bit of level grass in front was only fifty feet wide, and perhaps about the same from the house to the brim of the sea–bank, which dropped bushily down some forty feet to the sand and the flat shore–rocks and the ocean. But this grassy garden was littered with bits of rag, and newspapers, sea–shells, tins and old sponges. And the lot next to it was a marvellous constellation of tin cans in every stage of rustiness, if you peeped between the bushes.
"You'll take the ashes and the rubbish too?" said Somers to the sanitary–man who came to take the sanitary tin of the earth–closet every Monday morning.
"No," responded that individual briefly: a true Australian Cockney answer, impossible to spell. A sort of neow sound.
"Does anybody take them?"
"Neow. We take no garbage."
"Then what do I do with them?"
"Do what you like with 'em." And he marched off with the can. It was not rudeness. It was a kind of colonial humour.
After this Somers surveyed the cans and garbage of the next lot, under the bushes and everywhere, with colonial hopelessness. But he began at once to pick up rags and cans from his own grass.
The house was very pretty, and beautifully built. But it showed all signs of the eleven children. On the verandah at the side, on either side of the "visitors" door, was a bed: one a huge family iron bedstead with an indescribably rusty, saggy wire mattress, the other a single iron bedstead with the wire mattress all burst and so mended with a criss–cross of ropes. These beds were screened from the sea–wind by sacks, old pieces of awful carpeting, and pieces of linoleum tacked to the side of the verandah. The same happened on the third side of the house: two more rope–mended iron bedsteads, and a nailed–up lot of unspeakable rags to screen from the wind.
The house had three little bedrooms, one opening from each of the side verandahs, and one from the big central room. Each contained two saggy single beds. That was five people. Remained seven, with the father and mother. Three children must have gone into the huge bed by the side entrance door, and the other four must have been sprinkled over the other three outside, rope–mended beds.
The bungalow contained only the big room with five doors: one on each side the fire–place, opening into the inner bedroom and the kitchen respectively, and on each of the other three sides a door opening on to the verandah. From the kitchen opened a little pantry and a zinc–floored cubby–hole fitted with the inevitable Australian douche and a little sinkhole to carry off the water. This was the bathroom. There it was, all compact and nice, two outer bedrooms on the wings, and for the central block, the big room in front, the bedroom and kitchen at the back. The kitchen door opened on to the bit of grass at the back, near the shed.
It was a well–built little place, amazing in a world of wood and tin shacks. But Somers would not have liked to live in it with a thirteen–people family. There were eleven white breakfast cups, of which nine had smashed handles and broad tin substitutes quite cannily put on. There were two saucers only. And all the rest to match: seven large brown teapots, of which five had broken spouts: not one whole dish or basin of any sort, except a sauce boat. And rats! Torestin was a clean and ratless spot compared with Coo–ee. For the house was called Coo–ee, to fetch the rats in, Jack said.
The women flew at the house with hot water and soda. Jack and Somers spent the morning removing bedsteads into the shed, tearing down the horrid rag–and–dirt screens, pulling out the nails with which these screens had been held in place, and pulling out the hundreds of nails which had nailed down the dirt–grey, thin–carpet as if forever to the floor of the big room. Then they banged and battered this thin old patternless carpet, and washed it with soda and water. And then they banged and battered the two sofas, that were like sandbags, so full of sand and dust. And they took down all the ugly, dirt–filmed pictures of the Dana Gibson sort, and the "My refuge is in God" text.
"I should think so," said Jack. "Away from the muck they'd made down here."
Like demons the four of them flew at this Coo–ee house, and afternoon saw Jack and Somers polishing floors with a stuff called glowax, and Harriet and Victoria putting clean papers on all the shelves, and arranging the battered remnant of well–washed white crockery.
"The crockery is the worst item here," said Victoria. "You pay three–and–six and four shillings for one of these cups and saucers, and four–and–six for a common brown quart jug, and twelve guineas for a white dinner service."
Harriet looked at the horrid breakable stuff aghast.
"I feel like buying a tin mug at once," she said.
But Victoria did not bother. She took it all as it came. The people with the eleven children had paid three and a half guineas a week for seven months for the house.
At three o'clock Victoria's brother, a shy youth of seventeen, arrived in a buggy and drove Jack and Victoria the four miles to the home of the latter. Somers and Harriet had tea alone.
"But I love and adore the place," said Harriet. "Victoria says we can have it for thirty shillings a week, and if they'd let you off even half of the month for Torestin, we should be saving."
The Callcotts arrived home in the early dark.
"Oh, but doesn't the house smell different," cried Victoria.
"Beeswax and turps," said Jack. "Not a bad smell."
Again the evening passed quietly. Jack had not been his own boisterous self at all. He was silent, and you couldn't get at him. Victoria looked at him curiously, wondering, and tried to draw him out. He laughed and was pleasant enough, but relapsed into silence, as if he were sad, or gloomy.
In the morning sunlight Harriet and Somers were out first, after Somers had made the fire, having a frightened dip in the sandy foam. They kept far back from the great rollers, which, as the two sat in the dribbling back–wash, reared up so huge and white and fanged in a front attack, that Harriet always rose and ran, and it was long before she got really wet. And then when they did venture to sit in a foot of water, up came a sudden flush and flung them helpless rolling a dozen yards in, and banged them against the pebbles. It was distinctly surprising. Somers had never known that he weighed so little, that he was such a scrap of unimportance. And he still dared not quite imagine the whole of the blind, invisible force of that water. It was so different being in it, even on the edge of it, from looking at it from the outside.
As they came trembling and panting up the bank to the grass–plot, dripping and smelling so strong and sticky of the Pacific, they saw Jack standing smoking and watching.
"Are you going to try it?" said Somers.
He shook his head, and lit a cigarette.
"No. It's past my bathing season," he said.
They ran to the little tub–house and washed the sand and salt and sea–stickiness off with fresh water.
Somers wondered whether Jack was going to say anything to him or not. He was not sure. Perhaps Jack himself was not sure. And Somers had that shrinking feeling one has from going to see the doctor. In a quiet sort of way, the two men kept clear of one another. They loitered about in the sun and round the house during the morning, mending the broken deck–chairs and doing little jobs. Victoria and Harriet were cooking roast pork and apple sauce, and baking little cakes. It had already been arranged that the Somers should come and live in Coo–ee, and Victoria was quite happy and determined to leave a supply of nice eatables behind her.
In the afternoon they all went strolling down the sands, Somers and Victoria, Jack and Harriet. They picked up big, iridescent abalone shells, such as people had on their mantelpieces at home: and bits of purplish coral stuff. And they walked across two fields to have a look at an aeroplane which had come down with a broken propeller. Jack of course had to talk about it to the people there, while Somers hung back and tried to make himself invisible, as he always did when there were strange onlookers.
Then the four turned home. Jack and Victoria were leaving by the seven train next morning, Somers and Harriet were staying on a few days, before they returned to Sydney to pack up. Harriet was longing to have the house to themselves. So was Somers. He was also hoping that Jack wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't want anything of him. And at the same time he was waiting for some sort of approach.
The sea's edge was smoking with the fume of the waves like a mist, and the high shore ahead, with the few painted red–roofed bungalows, was all dim, like a Japanese print. Tier after tier of white–frost foam piled breaking towards the shore, in a haste. The tide was nearly high. Somers could hardly see beyond over the white wall–tops of the breaking waves, only on the clear horizon, far away, a steamer like a small black scratch, and a fantastic thread of smoke.
He lingered behind the rest, they were nearly home. They were at the wide sandy place where the creek left off. Its still brackish waters just sank into the sands, without ever running to meet the waves. And beyond the sands was a sort of marsh, bushes and tall stark dead gum–trees, and a few thin–tufted trees. Half wild ponies walked heavily from the bush to the sands, and across to the slope where the low cliff rose again. In the depths of the marsh–like level was the low chimney of the mine, and tips of roofs: and beyond, a long range of wire–like trees holding up tufts of foliage in handfuls, in front of the pale blue, diminishing range of the hills in the distance. It was a weird scene, full of definite detail, fascinating detail, yet all in the funeral–grey monotony of the bush.
Somers turned to the piled–up, white–fronted sea again. On the tip of a rock above him sat a little bird with hunched–up shoulders and a long beak: an absurd silhouette. He went towards it, talking to it. It seemed to listen to him: really to listen. That is another of the charms of Australia: the birds are not really afraid, and one can really communicate with them. In West Australia Somers could sit in the bush and talk to the flocks of big, h