Katherine (for she is Katherine, even if it is only her sisters who call her that, and even if it rings strangely in her ears on those rare occasions she hears her name) has had the oil lamp for over half her life now. It throws out a good, mellow light. Not too bright, harsh or dull. Soft is the word that comes to mind. She is a woman, however hard the years may have made her, who likes soft things. And this light is the softest thing she has ever owned. Soft enough to touch. Not in the way you can touch an object but in the way you can touch a shower of rain or a heavy fog. And she’s found more comfort in that light over the years than she’s found in people. Or animals, for that matter. She’s not sentimental about them either. But she is about this light. And for that reason she’ll never give it up. Not even when her sleep-out is built on the space that the tent now occupies. Certainly not for electric bulbs. She can turn it low to rest or turn it up to read, as she does now. For she has read all her life. She can barely remember not reading and one of the few concessions she has made to the passing of the years is a pair of reading glasses. The glasses and a small kerosene heater that currently warms her.
But as much as she draws comfort from the lamp and as much as she is warmed by it whenever she lights it, she is not dwelling on the quality of its light at the moment. She is brooding on the disruption to her morning.
How did it unfold? What precisely was the sequence of events? She was reading. She had a warm cup of tea beside her. The heater was lit. She had her book, she had her solitude, she had her quiet. Happy, the way she has always been, happy to be alone. Then there was a sound. From out there. Intrusive. A voice. Someone was calling out. And she had no idea how long they had been calling or to whom. Then the voice and the calling became louder and she realised it was calling for her. Furthermore, from the clarity and the volume, she knew that whoever was calling was quite near. On her property, in fact. And that was when she rose, threw down the book and marched outside to find a cheery young man and a glum-looking older one standing no more than ten yards away in front of her.
Intruders. Why do they always act cheerily? But he lost the cheery look, the young one, and backed off pretty smartly when he saw she wasn’t in any mood for cheery intruders. So did the glum-looking one with the camera in his hand. Then she was shouting, or was she? She was issuing orders. She was telling them to get off her property, and they backed off onto the road. At first she thought they might have been selling things, the things that hawkers all over the country sell. Then she saw their car. A fancy car that might be full of all sorts of fancy things that people never use, but buy anyway because they like the way they sparkle.
She soon realised they weren’t selling anything. They were from the newspaper, they said, which explained the fancy car. And they wanted to talk to her. A minute before that she had everything she needed. Her book, her solitude. Then two strangers wanted to talk to her. She knew why. It was the tent. It was her age. She was a curiosity. Oh, they didn’t say as much. But that was why they were here. And suddenly she’d felt like one of those stuffed figures in a museum. There were words. There was talk. Then the glum one raised his camera and took a photograph without asking. And that was that. She might have spoken to them. But not from that moment on. The cheek. The damned cheek. He may even have taken a second photograph before she turned and disappeared into her tent. And they were left on the road.
Yes, that was the sequence of events. She was reading. It was quiet. Then somebody called. Later, inside the tent, everything had become quiet again, apart from the sound of their motor car starting up, quite a long time afterwards, and she’d wondered what they’d been up to out there.
Now, at the end of the day, she has returned to her book. This lamp, which has been with her for most of her travels (and Katherine has travelled on coaches, trains, buses and on foot all over the country, not just for work, although there was always some sort of work to be found, but to see things), throws out an even, warm glow and continues to give her the comfort it always has.
But now she is tired. She removes her reading glasses and places them on a small table beside her fold-up bed. There is a dark wooden crucifix above the bed, a porcelain Jesus, yellowed with age, nailed to the cross. Katherine, as she has done every night of her life since she was a girl in a room she shared with her three sisters, sinks to her knees, brings her palms together and closes her eyes in prayer. For the day could never close until she knelt and prayed. Her lips move in the glowing, quiet tent, and there is the faintest sound of whispering.
Her prayer done, she rises and reaches out to the lamp beside her bed, and dims it. And it is precisely at this moment that Skinner, observing the dimming of the light from across the other side of the paddocks, turns back into the house. Katherine lies back, drifting into a doze, little realising that her light has been noted. More than noted — that her light has given comfort beyond the confines of her tent, out there, where the solitary figure of Skinner stood gazing upon it across the silvery long grass.