18

From her first trip to the coast Mollie returned very plump and pleased with her baby, a fat rosy little blue-eyed girl.

She felt thoroughly important and satisfied with herself. She had stayed with her aunt in Geraldton; and ever so many people had called on her, Fairweathers, Munroes, Castlereaghs, Carewes, bringing little gifts for the baby. Phyllis had bibs, bonnets and bootees enough for a dozen babies. Mrs Fairweather had taken Mollie under her wing, helped her to shop, and drove her about in her car to afternoon teas.

Curious perhaps, but not unkindly the attentions were. Everybody who ever had a baby gave Mollie advice about feeding and clothing the child, and she thoroughly enjoyed being the object of so much interest, deference and courtesy.

“As a social experiment, Mollie is quite a success,” Eustace Fairweather wrote to Hugh. “That’s the difference between girls in this country and a girl in the old country who might have had her experience. Mollie has no sense of inferiority because she might have washed dishes for some of these people. None whatever. She is very common sense and natural about the difference in her position now and then, taking all the amenities shown her as a matter of course. An admirable little mother, healthy, unassuming, with just sufficient realization of her importance as Mrs Hugh Watt of Wytaliba.”

Hugh had gone down to Nuniewarra to meet Mollie and he was very delighted to find her so handsome and pleased to be coming home again. It had been lonelier than he expected without her in the neat orderly house she left him. And the baby, his daughter — he was filled with awe and an adoring reverence for her. Was this really his daughter, the small fat fair-skinned little creature in muslin and lace whom Mollie displayed so proudly? Any lingering regret he may have harboured that she was not a son disappeared.

A son, of course, would have belonged more to him. There was the cooboo who played about the stock-yards with the black children, his skin just a shade lighter than theirs, honey brown. With what agony Hugh thought of him, sweating at night. To Coonardoo, in all that year before Mollie went to the coast, he had scarcely spoken. Only once in the shed when he was working at the forge, a furnace going between them, and the children were playing about, running in and out of the shed, Hugh had glanced from Winni to Coonardoo, and said, “Take care of him, Coonardoo.”

And Coonardoo, her dark eyes unswerving, had answered, “Eeh-mm.”

“By and by, when he’s a big chap, I’ll take him out with me,” Hugh said. “We’ll give him a horse, eh, Coonardoo? Teach him to ride?”

Her eyes gleamed. She understood Hugh was attached to the child; that he would like to look after him.

“Eeh-mm,” she murmured again, and turning her eyes from him went down to the house.

Mollie’s baby, fresh and pink-and-white, was a fairy creature. Hugh loved her; but she was less real, much less his own than that son of a whirlwind. Always as he leant over, played with and held the baby, he thought of Winni. His affection for the boy plagued him.

Was it because he reproached himself for the existence of the child? Perhaps. Hugh could not tell. Did he reproach himself really?

Coonardoo had been the one sure thing in his life when his mother went out of it. He had grasped her. She was a stake, something to hang on to. More than that, the only stake he could hang on to. He had to remind himself of her dark skin and race. Hugh had never been able to think of Coonardoo as alien to himself. She was the old playmate; a force in the background of his life, silent and absolute. Something primitive, fundamental, nearer than he to the source of things: the well in the shadows.

It was very easy for a school-master to preach virginity in the playing fields of a boys’ school; but here in a country of endless horizons, limitless sky shells, to live within yourself was to decompose internally. You had to keep in the life flow of the country to survive. You had to be with it, and of it, in order to work, move as it did. After all what was this impulse of man to woman, woman to man, but the law of growth moving within them? How could a man stand still, sterilize himself in a land where drought and sterility were hell? Growth, the law of life, which brought beauty and joy in all the world about him? No wonder the blacks worshipped life, growth — sex — as the life source.

From the moment she saw Mollie’s baby there was no one more devoted to her than Coonardoo.

She had exclaimed with wide ayes at the lovely little creature. At first Mollie would scarcely allow the gins to touch Phyllis; but after a while, when the child was fractious, teething, or having digestive upsets, she was glad enough to hand the baby to Coonardoo to mind and look after for a while.

Coonardoo took the baby for walks, or put her to sleep, while Mollie rested in the afternoon. Coonardoo did all the washing and ironing of Phyllis’s small clothes. Neither Meenie nor Bardi would have dared to touch them.

Phyllis was just toddling when Mollie knew another baby was coming. The winter had been long and dry, and she was nervy and exhausted by nursing Phyllis, who was a big healthy child. As the hot days lengthened and bore down on her with their breathless stillness and dust storms she was glad enough of any excuse to leave the wide dry plains, bare blue skies, and promised herself a breathing space among the small bright shops and comfortable homes of Geraldton. She longed to be able to put on a light frock and go visiting, talk with other women. The baby, she hoped, would be a boy this time. She supposed she ought to have a boy, and it might be as well to get the business over as soon as possible.

When the baby arrived and was a girl Mollie was annoyed as well as disappointed. Everybody sympathized with her. When Mrs Fairweather came to see the baby, cheerily, consoling, she said, “Never mind, my dear, the next will be a boy.”

“Don’t talk to me about any next,” Mollie cried.

“But of course, my dear, there must be a next. You don’t imagine Hugh is going to be happy until he has a son?”

“I suppose not,” Mollie moaned.

“And it’s natural enough, surely.” Mrs Fairweather looked down on the soft, chubby-cheeked little creature she was nursing. “This is a darling, of course. I’d give anything in the world for her myself. But a man needs a son. Hugh wants a boy to be a companion in his old age, to work with him, and to hand on Wytaliba to —”

“Wytaliba! Wytaliba!” Mollie exclaimed petulantly. “It’s all Wytaliba.”

“But surely, dearie,” Mrs Fairweather protested, “it’s your job to be a good wife and mother. Why, if ever a woman was built for mothering, you are … You’re robust; Hugh’s a good, clean-living fellow. Aren’t you proud of your babies, the dear fat fluffy things?”

“It’s always the people who haven’t got children think they want them,” Mollie declared waspishly.

The sensitive face of the doctor’s childless old wife quivered. For a moment she wondered whether Eustace was right; whether the marriage of two physically fit and suitable young people, without any psychological bond, was going to be the success they had hoped.

“Oh, I know I’m ignorant and common!” Mollie snapped, something of Elizabeth Fairweather’s revulsion of feeling reaching and stirring the resentment which had been fermenting within her.

Coonardoo was much more at the homestead than out on the run while the children were little. Her own cooboo was five years old when Mollie’s third daughter was born. There was so much to do for Mollie’s children, Coonardoo had no time for babies of her own, Meenie and old women in the uloo said.

And as for Coonardoo, she loved to walk off with one of Mollie’s babies, and spend the afternoon in the shade of the creek trees, singing to her; telling the children stories, making tracks for them in the sand, showing them how to copy the footprints of wild turkey, kangaroo and dingoes.

As often as not Winning-arra and her own little girls joined them. Winni would throw toy kylies of curved tin, or dig in the sand for water and bungarras with Charmi and Beilaba to amuse Phyllis.

Hugh had seen Coonardoo down at the creek with the children, and heard her singing her little song of the kangaroos to them:

“Towera chinima podinya
Towera jinner mulbeena …”

One day he came on them while she was telling the story of the emu and wild turkey.

“Turkey bin argument with emu, which one better woman,” Coonardoo said. “Turkey say, emu go walkabout all day; got no kids. Emu say, ‘Eeh-mm, got weary bugger (plenty) kids.’ Emu go bush, come back with plenty kids. Turkey got only cootharra (two) kids. Turkey say emu can’t run so fast; emu run to creek and come back again. Say turkey can’t run so fast. Turkey run to creek, little way, go up, fly … leave kids with emu.”

Coonardoo’s laughter and gurgling with the children was as merry and fresh as theirs. Everybody enjoyed the joke.

“Turkey want to go away, Coonardoo?” Hugh said.

“Eeh-mm,” she murmured with downcast eyelids.

In her sickness, weariness and dissatisfaction Coonardoo was the person Mollie talked most to.

“I don’t know what on earth I’d do without you, Coonardoo,” she said. “I don’t really.”

Coonardoo had taken over the bread-making. She looked after the cooking and the children. When Mollie went away to the coast for her fourth baby, the children were left in Coonardoo’s care. Mollie’s fourth and fifth daughters were as much an excuse to get away from Wytaliba as desperate bids for a son. But Betty was a last attempt. Mollie swore she would do no more child-bearing; neither would she live in the Nor’-West all her days. She had no patience with the new baby — was weary to death of babies, she said; never wanted to set eyes on another as long as she lived.

Coonardoo took the baby in her arms and walked off with her. When Mollie had not slept at night, was tired out and hysterical, Coonardoo made the children play in the garden or up at the sheds until she was ready to take them away to the creek. Often she carried a bag of mending with her and sewed while the children played, or slept, curled up beside her in the shade.

Although Meenie and Bardi still washed, scrubbed and swept about the house, Coonardoo did everything for the children at that time; bathed them, cooked and sewed for them, put them to bed. Mollie had grown to depend on her for every little service.

“Coonardoo! Coonardoo!” she was always calling.

Through all the nervy restlessness and fury of Mollie’s discontent Coonardoo was her slave. Silently, with slow grace and dignity, she waited on and worked for Hugh’s wife, very often not getting the rest at midday with the other gins, it was so difficult for her to go without. An expression of suffering and fortitude deepened on her face.

Meenie muttered and scowled until Hugh wondered what on earth was the matter with her. He understood at last, she was concerned for Coonardoo.

“Here, Mollie,” he cried roughly one day, “you’re working that girl to death. Can’t you see?”

“Who?”

“Coonardoo!”

“Of course,” Mollie exclaimed. “It’s always someone else you’re thinking of. Never of me!”

“You go and have a bit of shut-eye, Coonardoo,” Hugh called, as she was taking the children for their afternoon walk. “I’ll mind the kids today.”

He played with them quite happily, leaning against the trunk of a big white-barked gum where black shadows of its leafage sprawled and fluttered across the brilliantly lighted red and yellow earth. He watched Winni, as well as the little girls who chattered and played so delightedly beside him. Winni’s skin was the colour of dark honey; his hair not duskier than the locks of Mollie’s little girls. Yet he was a pure-blooded young aboriginal to look at: his eyes brown and shy, with jetty curled lashes.

Days and years fled, so much the same, the heat waning and growing, rain threatening and fleeing, showers and thunderstorms flashing, but never dispensing the good slow drenching which would have revived and saturated the dead earth. Mollie stayed a year through on the station; but before next summer her trunks were packed. She counted the days until she and the children could drive away to the coast for the hot weather.

A long drought had driven Hugh to the banks. Wytaliba fell again under the dead hand which Mumae had struggled against so long. But what could be done? Hugh was desperate at the prospect of losing more stock. He had to sink wells to save cattle, and money was needed for that. Every year Mollie’s journey to the coast cost more than a well or two. When there were babies about, it was all very well; but afterwards, he thought, she might face out a hot season. The children were sturdy; heat did not affect them.

Mollie loathed the station. She wanted Hugh to sell out and buy a shop in Geraldton. She could not understand his faith in the place, his loyalty to it.

“No,” he said, “I’ll never sell out, or give up.”

There seemed nothing between them at last but endless arguments and bickering.

Saul Hardy tried to pour oil on the troubled waters, but his efforts at peacemaking usually amounted to a siding with Hugh and singing the praises of Wytaliba and station life generally. Like a barnacle he clung to piles of the homestead, and Hugh’s way of deferring to, humouring, and making a fuss of the old man were constant sources of irritation to Mollie. Saul had his quagey old man’s ways of course. Mollie found them very trying; although he was wonderfully good natured with her and with the children.

Wild imps they were, but Saul was really fond of “Youie’s five queens” as he called them, allowed them to plague him and scramble all over him to their heart’s content. Only now and then he complained bitterly when they tore his papers — he was a great reader, old Saul — hid his pipe or tobacco, and made drawings in coloured chalk all over his Riddle of the Universe.

Mischievous, and full of a gay restless vitality, her daughters were growing up no better than youngsters from the uloo, Mollie said: particularly Phyllis. Whackings and squalls were noised along the veranda almost every day, as she punished them for fighting and scratching each other, playing about the stock-yards when a beast was being cut up, or running off with Winni, Charmi and Beilaba along the creek.

Saul could not bear to hear the children cry.

“You’re a bit heavy-handed, missus,” he would object in his blunt way.

“Mind your own business, Mr Hardy,” Mollie would reply sharply, over and over again. “I must bring up my children in the best way I can.”

Saul laughed at the children’s rough, rude ways, she said; encouraged Phyllis and Cora to play up. And Hugh was as bad as Saul. It was no use expecting him to correct the children, or make them behave decently.

Hugh was away in Karrara the morning the friction between Mollie and Saul took fire. Saul had chased the children out of the garden and locked the gate, because they trampled on some seed-beds he was watching anxiously.

Phyllis, picking up a stone, threw it after him, screaming at the top of her voice, like an old gin, “Walyee mari, minyinbulla nunki-nunki chungee-chungee booketera kundi-kundi spa!”

Mollie, who saw and heard, called to her from the veranda. The child went to her, beginning to cry. Saul hurried to intercede for Phyllis.

But Mollie seized the child and hustled her, kicking and screaming, to her room from which the slaps of a piece of flat board resounded on Phyllis’s little bottom.

Old Saul sat down on the edge of the veranda, pulled out his pipe and smoked miserably. Phyllis was dear to him in a way no one had ever been. Since she was a baby she had snuggled up to him, pulling his beard and hair, and rubbing wet kisses all over his face. It made him groan inwardly to hear her cry, and to be the cause of her punishment.

“You oughtn’t to beat her like that, missus,” he said when Mollie reappeared. Phyllis, howling and sobbing, had thrown herself on the floor in the room behind them.

“I’ll thank you not to interfere, Mr Hardy,” Mollie cried furiously. “You’re always interfering … and it’s no business of yours. Do you think I’m going to let Phyllis use that filthy language? Over and over again I’ve told her she’s not to … and she goes on just the same.”

“You’re right, of course,” Saul said. “It’s not nice for a little girl to be usin’ them blacks’ swear words. But she doesn’t know the meaning of them … and then, too, she’ll forget every native word she ever knew when you take the children away to school.”

“We’re not gone yet,” Mollie exclaimed in her despair and impatience. “And anyhow I’m not going to have Phyllis growing up defying me the way she does —”

“It’s your nerves, missus,” Saul said. “Things have got on your nerves a bit, and that’s why you’re banging the children about. They’re not bad kids, real nice little nippers, the lot of ’em, I think, and there’s no need to whack ’em really. Only —”

“See here, Mr Hardy” — Mollie’s temper was rising beyond the point at which she knew what she was saying — “I’ve stood you about as long as I can. Things have got on my nerves, as you say. You among them. I won’t have you interfering between me and the children any longer. I simply won’t have it. And the sooner you understand that the better.”

“I understand.” Saul rose on his slight old legs. Very little and old he looked as he stood before her. “I’m a bit of a nuisance, hanging round.”

“Too right, you are,” Mollie said and, turning her back on him, walked away.

Late in the afternoon she saw Saul pottering about in the stock-yards and watched him ride out on his own old white mare which one of the gins had brought in. Coonardoo said Saul had asked for some flour and tea for his tucker bag, and told her to tell Hugh he was going out to camp with Cock-Eyed Bob for a bit.

Hugh came in after several days and Mollie described to him what had happened. Hugh said little; but he prepared to go out again, taking Warieda with him.

“I wouldn’t for worlds have the old chap’s feelings hurt,” he said. “You don’t know what he might do if he thought we didn’t want him on Wytaliba. He’s got nowhere else to go … Besides, I do want him. What’s a station veranda for, if an old chap like Saul Hardy can’t camp on it —”

“Of course,” Mollie cried. “That’s what you would say. And it doesn’t matter what I have to put up with.”

She was distressed, all the same, when Hugh and Warieda returned without Saul a week later.

“We followed his tracks out to the edge of the sandhills,” Hugh said. “Found him sitting under a thorn-bush. He never even tried making for Cock-Eyed Bob’s. It’s what he always said he’d do, ride out there east, where what they call the sandy desert begins, and let his horse go. We buried him under the thorn-bush.”

There was no money for Mollie to go to the coast that year. Hugh was sorry; but it could not be helped. If she thought less of herself and more of her work about the place, he said, she would feel better. His mother had worked through years on Wytaliba — a scrap of a woman.

The five little girls fluttered about that summer after Saul Hardy’s death, shrieking and screaming, much as they had always done. Hugh was on good enough terms with them. He was really soft about the little blighters, he assured himself, although they were the joke of the countryside, his “poker hand”. He had his secret solace after all. There was that son of a whirlwind who was ten years old and could go out with him now, ride like a demon and look after the pack-horses.

Wherever Hugh went Winni went. It was recognized that Winning-arra was Hugh’s boy, made his camp-fire, spread out his rugs. He slept with the blacks; but everybody in the uloo knew Youie’s affection for Winning-arra.