The truck drew up in front of the store. A face peered out, stared, retreated with the information that this was a stranger, a man in an overcoat.
It must be the man for Furlows’, said Amy Quong. She put down a bottle of olive oil and went outside to see for herself.
Hagan was fishing in a trouser pocket for his fare. It was hard to get inside, under the overcoat. The wind cut into his face making it red. A drop on the end of his nose hung distinct and luminous.
You the man for Furlows’? asked Amy Quong.
Yes, he said.
This was one of the Chows, a squat little thing with a yellow-brown face, standing there like a schoolmistress, not all Chinese perhaps, but very like that schoolmistress in Muswellbrook.
They’re sending a truck, she said, but it isn’t here. The road’s bad from Glen Marsh in weather like this.
That’s a fine look-out for me, he said.
Oh, it’ll be here all right if you wait.
Then it looks as though I’ll have to wait.
In all this rain, or go into the store, and sit about with a lot of Chows. She stood there watching him with folded hands. It took some time for a strange face to sink in.
Got such a thing as a pub? he asked.
Round the left and up the street. You’ll see it up at the top.
Well, I’ll go on up and look for it, he said.
About time he had a drink, sitting in the truck with a loony all that way, there was nothing like a drink for company. That girl poured the gin into the ginger beer, sitting there cool as if it was water, then drinking it off. Said her name was Bella, sitting in Sydney drinking gin. He went on up the street. His walk was stiff from sitting cramped in the truck, and his coat hung down nearly to his heels. He turned the corner and there was a girl walking quickly down the hill, her hand held inside her coat. Flat and sour she looked, the kind that stared the other way when you gave them a smile, not that you’d waste your time, it was only friendly to smile. That was the sort of place you’d struck, you could see that, you were not a fool. It was a dirty joint. The houses looked as if they might fall down. It was poor and dirty, with skinny old women rooting about in their backyards, like so many rickety fowls. But he might have known, there was nothing but cockie farmers from Moorang to Happy Valley, and that was always a poor sign.
It made him feel superior to come from New England, where the big squatters drove into Muswellbrook for the picnic races. You had money to burn. You hadn’t, but somebody had, and that was the point. Somebody always stood you a drink. As you leant up against the bar somebody always said, come on, Hagan, what’ll you have? And it was intimate and friendly. You told stories, about the time the drought, about the time the floods, and they were always pretty tall, and everyone knew and tried to spin a taller one themselves.
He couldn’t see any pub. She had said at the top. But all he could see was the pale road meandering out of the town and two old shorthorn cows standing nose to nose at the bend. A little miserable sheep-dog bitch quivered at the side of the road and gulped down a piece of bone. He felt like a dog in the rain. He felt like a fool.
Of course there were houses. You could always ask. Over there for instance, that woman in a cap peeping out of her front door, seeing what she could see, and she looked a bit of all right with that jacket hiding only half the goods.
I say, he called. Then he took off his hat. Excuse me, he said, can you tell me the way to the pub?
Yes, she said.
She came out on the steps.
Yes, it’s just at the top. On the right. You can’t miss it, she said.
She got back on to the porch out of the rain. This was a bit of class, he felt, with all those ribbons and the brooch. You could see she took her time, probably ate breakfast in bed. So he stood with his hat in his hand.
There’s another one on the left, she smiled, but that’s closed. They couldn’t make two of them pay.
Well, that’s a pity now, isn’t it?
He had made her laugh. It came panting out very easily, perhaps a little too easily, but it showed she was ready to please. And when she laughed the little curls at the side jogged up and down.
Oh, she said suddenly, closing her mouth.
She ran back into the hall, as if she’d been bitten, as if…
No, she said, coming back. You’re all right, she said, smiling again, they were old friends. I suddenly thought of the time. But you’re all right. How the morning flies! And anyway you’re a traveller. They’ll always sell a traveller a drink.
That’s one advantage, I suppose.
Makes you want to keep on the road.
He laughed himself. His hair was getting wet in the rain. He ought to put on his hat.
Well, she said, up on the right.
As if she was telling him he’d better move, and he couldn’t stand there, right in front of her porch, but she’d like to keep him there all the same, or ask him in, or…She had a mole on her left cheek. And here he was standing in a puddle, and he ought to go.
So long, he said.
She nodded her head, smiled, her lips sank back again into a pout.
As she said, it was just a little way up on the right. It was a big brown building, wood, with baskets of ferns that hung down dead from the verandah ceiling. They drooped
down very black and spidery out of the baskets of net. The verandah had a dirt floor. A child’s celluloid doll was lying on its face, one leg cocked up in the air. Well, this was the place and a drink was a drink anywhere. He looked back down the road. She was still standing on the porch of her house. As soon as he turned she went inside as if she did not want him to know she had watched him up the road. He waved, but already it was too late, she had gone inside, she had not seen. He smiled and opened the door of the bar.
Morning, said Hagan, going into the black atmosphere of the bar.
He slapped the black wood with his hand, just in a spirit of friendliness, to show he knew what was expected in a place like this. The publican nodded. He had a sharp, drawn face, his lips going in on the gums. It was not what you expected of a publican, any of this, or the bar, but it was Happy Valley after all, so he said to the publican sharply:
A double Johnnie Walker, Steve.
In a dark square that was all you could see of an inner room (it was probably the kitchen or a scullery) the publican’s wife and two girls paused in wiping dishes and stared at the strange face. He did not feel moved to return their stare. It made you feel lumped down in nowhere, this black room. Only the woman standing at her front porch waving the direction with plump hands gave you a sense of being anywhere at all. You could see she was different, and that she saw you were different, a kind of mutual sympathy.
There were two men in the bar. One was perhaps a drover, wearing a plaid overcoat and spurs. The spurs tinkled when he moved his feet. And he had a black leather
stock-whip over his arm. But the other was an old man, one of those static old men you see in country bars, who seem to have no significance at all, except as recipients of drinks that they pour in through the meshes of a yellowish moustache, just standing and nodding, willing to listen to a story, but never giving much in return. They are generally called Abe or Joe. Though this one was called Barney, as a matter of fact.
Just a dried-up old post, like a post rotten with ants. Hagan swallowed his drink. And the snakey drover, with a stock-whip coiled like a black snake.
Yes, said the drover to the old man, that was a nice little mare. Carry you a ’undred miles an’ not a sore on ’er back. She was game. An’ not too big. She was a pretty little mare. So I said to Walter, ’ow much do you want for your mare, Walter, I said. An’ Walter said, look, ’Erbert, if I was to sell that mare I’d be sellin’ me bloody self, ’e said. An’ I said, you’re right, Walter, you wouldn’t see a finer little mare in the country, Walter, I said.
The man nodded his head.
You wouldn’t see a finer mare, he agreed.
Hagan had another whisky. It made him sick, talking about some runt of a horse, as if you could breed a horse on sour country like this, that wasn’t a bag of worms with a couple of gammy legs. It just made him sick.
What you know about horses? he said.
Eh? said the drover, opening his eyes.
Hagan plunged his mouth in his glass. He would take his time. He would make them open their eyes. And he wished she could have seen, with her pink ribbons, how
he dealt with people in bars, or how he got on a horse, that time in Singleton, and that was a horse. So he filled his mouth with whisky and swallowed it down, and it was no doubt whisky made you feel good, made you open your coat. He stood there with his legs apart staring impressively at the two men.
You haven’t got horses down here, he said, and waited for it to sink in. You won’t breed horses in hill country, nothing but runts, he said. Give us another whisky, Steve. You won’t have seen horses if you haven’t been up north. Nothing but runts down here.
An’ who said I haven’t been up north? said the drover, shifting his whip.
His spurs tinkled as he spat straight on the floor. The lip of the old man hung pinkly, stupidly, down.
Nobody said, said Hagan, taking his glass. I was making a statement, nothing more.
Two can’t play at that, I suppose?
Hagan bent his knees. He was talking to people in bars, and they listened because there was something to hear, because he could tell a story well, and he was feeling good for the first time, just as if the pub was full, in race week up north, and people coming in, and girls in the bedrooms upstairs changing their dresses for a dance.
There was a horse in Singleton, he said, swallowing down. That was a horse. A big brown colt. They couldn’t do a thing with that bloody colt. And there you could see, he was a beauty, plenty of bone and size, nothing runty about a horse like that. But there they were standing round, bringing twitches and God knows what, and the colt shaking them
off, and the saddle-cloth they threw over his head. It made you laugh. There was a cove called Rube Isaacs, and Rube got a kick straight in the pants. Well, you couldn’t help laugh to hear Rube letting on. And the horse just stood there snorting, flattening his ears. So I up and said, what do you say if you leave off arsing about and let me have a go at the horse. The brute wasn’t having a chance. And I grabbed hold of the brute by the ear. I twisted his bloody ear all right. And I got on his back. And Christ, he didn’t half let fly round and round that yard, and everyone climbing on to the fence. I thought I was losing me guts, the way we kept on hitting the ground, with that big bastard heaving about. And then…well, what do you think?
Nobody thought. The three women in the inner room paused with their napkins and stared out. The drover wiped his nose on the back of his hand.
He cleared the fence, said Hagan, taking a drink, and started on a five-mile lick. But he hadn’t got me beat. Not me. I haven’t had a horse that could beat me yet. I just gave that colt his head and let him do what he liked.
Wonder ’e ain’t doin’ it yet, said the drover, slamming down his glass.
Doing what?
You ought to know, said the drover, shifting his whip. You’re tellin’ the story. It isn’t me.
Now look here, if you think…
There ain’t no cause to get nasty, gentlemen, said the publican, leaning over the bar. His lips flapped in on his gums. For he only wore his teeth on Sunday afternoons.
Who’s getting nasty? said Hagan.
You ought to be able to tell us that. Don’t let that one beat you, the drover said.
The old man simpered into his beer.
If you think I’m a liar…
You’re a touchy one, sighed the drover. You’ll be telling a bloke ’e’s got ’is ’and on your watch-chain next.
This was what you got for telling a story to a snakeface, and you couldn’t argue with a snake, you broke its back without waiting to ask what it thought. You told a story and you knew it was a story, or a lie, or a story, but you didn’t tell a man it was a lie because it was a story. But those mean snake eyes, he’d like to push its face, and she’d see he was pretty strong, like the time he bashed that shearer up at Werris Creek, she’d like to see, standing there with a bit too much on view, and white, with that sort of fur around the neck. He wanted to hit somebody, something. He wanted to land out, show that it wasn’t being drunk, because anyway it wasn’t drunk, and eating at seven o’clock, she said was time to beckon him past the clock, to look, to eat, looking at the clock to see if a traveller or what.
Keep it friendly, gentlemen, said the publican.
That’s right, Bill, said the drover. We’re all pals, ain’t we? Bloody pals. ’Ere you, Mr Horsebreaker, what are you goin’ to have on me?
I’ll have the same, said Hagan.
You couldn’t refuse the offer of a drink.
It was a lovely horse.
You bet it was, said the drover.
Yes. A lovely horse.
Even if he hadn’t ridden, not that horse, he had ridden
a horse, and here they were leaning with their arms on the bar, their elbows touching, and it was better now, a familiar glow in the bottles, the publican’s face filled out into a plumper curve. There was a clatter of plates from the kitchen inside as the publican’s wife piled them up, and the two girls hung their cloths to dry by the stove. The drover was telling about the time he was caught in the snow above Kambala with a mob of sheep, it was early snow, he was bringing them down from summer pasturage, but the snow caught them and the sheep died, and once two men had died in a drift at the same place, and someone saw one of the men about five years after, only it wasn’t the man, it was something like him, moving about among the trees, or perhaps it was only a grey tree. Then Hagan told the one about how he swam the Barwon in flood. And the one about the girl and the motor-bike. They all laughed, the old man very high up, so that you wondered a bit. But they were all friends.
I’ll have to be getting along, said Hagan. They’re sending a truck from Glen Marsh.
He patted the drover on the back. He wanted to lie down on the floor and let the drover walk over him, they could all walk over him, he loved them all. But instead he had to go to Glen Marsh. He always had to move on just as the geography of a place began to get familiar, and altogether it was very sad.