She stood near the broken she-oak tree, her hand shading her eyes. She could see miles across the saltbush plain, but there was no sign of that little patch of moving white—the canvas-covered wagon of her husband.
The heat was palpable. It moved through the air like waves of syrup through water. It had weight and pressed on her bare arms. No sound, no movement. . . . The sky was cloudless.
She was weary and heavy with child.
Two days ago she had watched the curved-topped drover’s wagon pass through the myall clump and strike across the dusty-coloured saltbush towards the home of Mrs Clancy, the wool teamster’s wife—a twenty-mile trip. Mrs Clancy was their nearest neighbour and a good midwife it was said. All the people of the plains knew her.
The wife lowered her hand. She had expected her husband back the next day. Two days had almost gone. She was afraid. Her time was nearly here. Yesterday she had had a bad attack of pain. She cried so easily. It took so much courage.
She turned wearily. The small, pine-log house conserved the heat, which took from it its spaciousness and fouled it with a heavy smell of stagnation. The coolest spot was beneath the bed. She had lain there for some time that morning.
Three topknot pigeons alighted with a flutter of wings on the fence beside the house. Their bills were open. All the crabholes were dry. They sat with their heads on one side. She knew that when she walked inside they would fly down to the dog’s tin to drink.
As she brushed between the hessian bags hanging over the doorway, disturbed flies rose from her back in a cloud of circling dots.
She moved slowly round the house preparing her evening meal.
She was careful with the water. The two-hundred-gallon tank on the dray propped near the door was nearly empty, and although she had thrown two packets of salts into the water to clear it when it had first been carted from the big, excavated tank five miles away, it was still very muddy.
She strained it through white flannel. There was no milk for her tea. She used an egg beaten up in water. When the tea was made she sat in the oven-like house sipping it and thinking.
That night she did not sleep and early next morning she scanned the plain for a sign of the wagon. The plain was empty.
The heat became more intense as the morning passed. Before her anxious eyes it became a vapour that shimmered as it rose from the dry earth. A needlegrass-covered sandhill on the edge of the plain was reflected in the clear waters of a mirage. Some sheep feeding on its edge appeared to have the legs of giants.
Later, pain came upon her and she thought, ‘It’s coming.’
She broke out into a cold perspiration and began to tremble. She walked into the house and lay on her bed. She got up and commenced to walk about.
She suddenly heard the excited yapping of dogs as they strained on the chain tied to an axle, the rattle of the worn boxes of her husband’s wagon wheels. She went to the door.
‘Are you all right?’ her husband called anxiously. He had pulled up before the gate. She nodded. Mrs Clancy climbed down. Her back was black with flies. She waved her hand before her face and bustled up, full of soft murmurings. She hurried the wife inside.
‘Just in time—just in time,’ she murmured to herself.
The husband led the horse round to a shed to unharness it. It had froth on its neck and shoulders and shone with sweat. Sweat trickled over its hooves in streaks and dripped from its belly in round, black drops.
Inside, the young wife clung to the old, experienced woman with the short, plump body and the round, motherly face.
‘I’m frightened,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry, dear. Don’t be frightened. You will be all right. God is very good to women in the bush.’ Her voice was a caress.
She hurried round heating water and attending to the trembling girl.
The husband appeared. The young wife looked at his worried face. She smiled at him bravely. He was anxious to be of use. Mrs Clancy hurried him outside.
‘That’s one reason why I don’t mind having babies,’ she said to the girl, ‘for if ever a man runs for his wife, he’ll run for her then. They’re never more kind or thoughtful.’
The girl crouched on the edge of the bed.
‘You must keep walking till near the time, dear. You will be all right—a big strong girl like you. Keep walking about the room. That’s the way.’
The girl kept walking to and fro. When bouts of pain seized her she clung to the end of the iron bedstead, swaying and moving her lips soundlessly. Her face was pressed against a stockwhip that hung on the end of the bed. When the pain ceased and she drew a shuddering breath she could smell the scent of its myall-wood handle.
She commenced walking again. She felt so alone. Her husband was near yet he seemed far away from her. She felt a need of her mother. The heat in the room was intense. Flies buzzed round her.
In her walking periods she dreaded letting herself sink into the abyss of pain again. To have to encourage the darkness of that lonely agony sapped her courage.
‘Dear God!’ she whispered.
‘Don’t fight against it, dear.’ Mrs Clancy stroked her arm.
Later she said, ‘Better lie down now, dear.’
But the young wife was afraid and cried:
‘I can’t lie down. Not yet.’
‘Yes, dear. Come on.’
‘I want to kneel on the floor. . . .’
Tears ran down her cheeks.
The gentle old midwife laid her hand upon her and led her to the bed, crooning soft words.
The wife lay gazing at the enormous bulge in the calico ceiling above her bed. The accumulated sand from many storms had collected there and hung down like a dead body. Each summer it got worse. She was always afraid it would burst and smother her. John had promised to let it out.
The midwife knotted two towels to the head of her bed.
‘Catch hold of these when it gets bad.’
When it gets bad! She laughed weakly. When it gets bad.
‘Oh God! God!’
Mrs Clancy sat beside her.
Through the obscurity of pain that howled and shrieked and shot like lightning about the room above her open, unseeing eyes, she could hear as from a distance the voice of this old woman:
‘Don’t worry, dear. Don’t be frightened. God is very good to women in the bush. There, there now.’
There had been no period in this young wife’s married life in which some responsibility or trivial worry had not loomed in the background of her thoughts: a sick dog, fowls that did not lay, her husband’s troubles. . . . But now she was oblivious to all save her suffering. When lying in those periods of comparative ease, her whole mind was concentrated with a painful fixity on the first signs of another attack. Each one sapped more of her strength and courage.
As these bouts of agony got worse she clutched the knotted towels with her hands while disjointed thoughts and solitary words careered round her head. Her tortured body became the abode of two people—one who suffered and babbled, and one who looked on with a certain grave quietness.
‘I can’t stand much more . . . no more . . . ‘I’ll scream . . . Dear God . . . Oh! ‘I’m moaning . . . the heat . . . mother . . . I want mother . . . The pain, the pain, the pain . . .’
Cries burst from her. She felt herself mounting on a black, upward sweep of agony; floating off into space.
‘Don’t be frightened, dear. God is very good to women in the bush. It won’t be long.’
‘No more!—No more!’
She passed into a darkness where nothing existed, out again to the screams of demons, a falling, a cessation of pain while she lay weak and trembling with an unspeakable dread of going through it again and again and again.
‘Oh, Mrs Clancy,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t stand it. I can’t. I want to die. I want to die.’
And the soft, motherly voice comforted her:
‘You are a big, strong girl. Don’t worry. God is very good to women in the bush. Not long now.’
And the pains were nearer, always nearer. From intervals of half an hour to intervals of minutes; more intense and more unbearable until there was nothing in all her consciousness but pain, nothing in all the world but pain, an eternity of pain. . . .
And outside three wandering emus plucked the apple-bush beyond the house, and crows cried hoarsely as they flew overhead, and every tree and clump of scrub and single saltbush stood motionless in the heat with burning leaves and sapless trunks gasping for air and awaiting patiently the miracle of creation.
All through that summer day they watched the house, and when the friendless belah-trees were etched against the sunset sky like mops of witches hair, a thin cry came from the room with the golden window. A breeze stirred them. The myall-trees moved their drooping leaves and the she-oaks sighed softly. The breeze touched them and moved on across the saltbush plain with its message to the sky-touched distance.
In the little room with the golden window Mrs Clancy spoke:
‘You have a little son,’ she said.
The woman upon the bed heard her but dimly, yet even in the twilight region of waving shadows wherein she floated, the voice seemed heraldic and proud.
It ceased to be the voice of an old woman with bulging breasts and sweat-wet face. It was the acclaim of the lonely world about her; the bravo of the mulga, and the saltbush, and the smouldering sun. In the silence of an intense interest they had awaited this miracle; had waited while she brought into being a man-child who would one day play with the earth about their roots, who would crow with delight at the flight of birds and pat the rough bark of trees with little hands. They hailed him, these lonely children of the plains.
‘You have a little son. . . .’