Riverslake Read online

  The noise round the table subsided, and Radinski, though grinning broadly, bowed with simple courtesy to the old woman at the head.

  “Mama say,” he announced, “is not fair for Mr Murdoch must make Bruderschaft with old goat like Papa.” He bowed with comic seriousness to the old man, who roared with laughter. “Is better for make kiss with pretty girls—with Marika!”

  In the laughter and subdued cheering that followed his suggestion, Randolph, at one end of the table, and Mama Kasnik at the other, each cast a quick glance at Murdoch. Both noticed the red that surged into his boyish face.

  “Good, good!” the old man cried. “Maybe, Marika make best kiss from me!”

  He exploded into laughter. Murdoch looked across the table at the girl, who smiled back at him, a tremulous smile touched with shy gaiety. Radinski filled her glass, then leaned across and filled Murdoch’s.

  “Come for here, Mr Kerry,” he offered gravely. “Make Bruderschaft for Marika, for birthday.”

  Murdoch pushed back his chair, and through a sudden silence, struggled round to the other side of the table. As he passed Randolph, he winked and said, “Be in anything once!” But as he approached the girl’s chair, he felt an unaccustomed embarrassment. In silence, he picked up his glass and passed an arm through hers; as they drained their glasses her eyes were on his, close, clear and green, fringed with dark lashes.

  When they kissed her lips were soft and cool on his, and he tasted the wine on them. There flashed across his whirling mind the memory of a picture he had once seen of a jewel-like humming-bird throbbing in the throat of a blood-red hibiscus.

  “Happy birthday, Marika,” he whispered huskily. Amid the applause of the others at the table, he made his way back to his own seat.

  Radinski’s hand dropped for a moment on the girl’s fair hair, and she smiled up at him. The old woman, talking to the middle-aged man next to her, smiled and raised her glass to them; her eyes strayed across the table to Randolph, and almost simultaneously, their glances sought Murdoch.

  Surrounded by talk and laughter, the clink of glasses and the rattle of knives and forks, the boy sat steeped in silence, staring at the glass of wine in his hand. Mama Kasnik’s grizzled eyebrows shot upwards, almost imperceptibly. Randolph held her glance for a moment, and then, because what he saw there made him feel uncomfortable, turned to the man next to him.

  “Where do you work, John?” he asked, more to make conversation than for any other reason. The man had a thin, dark face with staring blue eyes behind thick glasses, and an unruly mop of black hair that should have been taken to a barber a month before.

  “I make bricks,” he said. “Of cement, you know?”

  He spoke almost perfect English, but very slowly, studying every word before he delivered it; during the evening he and Randolph had carried on desultory snatches of conversation, and the Australian had had difficulty in refraining from laughing every time he threw in a bit of slang that, so carefully and slowly enunciated, seemed wildly out of context.

  “You like it?” he asked. “Good pay?”

  “Good,” the Lithuanian said. “One week, maybe twelve pounds. But hard yakka. Still———” He shrugged. “I am young.”

  He placed a finger against his lips. Turning, Randolph saw that the dark, chunky little woman beside Murdoch was standing up, leaning against the table. Without waiting for silence she began to sing, and silence came immediately. Her voice was deep and throbbing, one that should have been a contralto but that had picked up something else that made it unforgettable. There was not a movement or a sound in the room.

  Watching her, as her great black eyes blazed with defiance one moment and softened into supplication the next, Randolph forgot the moustache on her lip, the straining bosom and the deep wet rings of perspiration that showed on her frock around the armpits; it was all covered fathoms deep, smoothed and erased in the almost unbelievable beauty and sadness of her singing.

  She stopped as abruptly as she had begun. She sat down, and while those round her were still clapping, she filled a glass with neat gin and raised it to Murdoch.

  “Good fluck!” she intoned, and swallowed it at a gulp.

  Randolph was still staring at her in wonderment. “God,” he breathed, more to himself than to the man next to him, “what a glorious voice!”

  “My oath!” the man called John agreed fervently.

  “What was her song about?” Randolph asked. “It sounded sad.

  “Oh, she is Ukrainian. They sing about love and death and the land, all mixed up. That song, maybe it is two, three, four hundred years old, but it might have been written for her.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, it says, ‘We come from the soil, we work for it and then, maybe, we lose it. But in the end, it takes us back.’” The Lithuanian shrugged, the un-Australian little gesture that Murdoch had caught so expertly. “Her father was a farmer, and his father. Her husband was one, too. The Russians killed her father, and she buried him, herself, in her own garden. You see—the ground took him back. And all her children, five of them, it took them too, with sickness and starving. She buried them, too. Her husband, she just didn’t see him again—he was partisan. You know, guerrilla? She’s not so old, about forty, you see, but all that has happened to her. It is all in what she sings, though it was written about someone else.”

  “Poor devil,” Randolph muttered. “But listen, isn’t that her husband over there, next to Mama Kasnik. I thought you said he was killed?”

  “A woman can’t live by herself,” the Lithuanian said, significantly. “Well, she can, but it’s not so hot.” He turned to his blonde wife, who, although she could understand little of what had been said, hung breathlessly on the words of the two men. Winking at Randolph, he said something to her in his own tongue; she blushed and pouted, smacking prettily at the thin, dark hand that held her own white paw. “They were married in Greta. They are happy—not like us, of course.” His eyes crept round again to his wife’s face. “But happy.”

  “Has everyone a story like that?” Randolph demanded, almost with exasperation, almost as though he resented, at every turn, stubbing his toes on the broken and scattered fragments of someone’s life. “Doesn’t anyone come out here for—well, for the change?”

  “Would you, Mr Randolph?” the foreigner asked softly. “Would you, if there was one small thing to hang on for, or one hope that things would be hunkey-dorey again, some time?”

  “I don’t know,” Randolph said doubtfully. “I like to get around.”

  “Yes, in your own country, where there is no change of language or customs, wherever you go. But we came out here for one reason, Mr Randolph. We had nothing to stay for in our countries, and we had hoped for something better here.”

  “Had hoped?” Randolph echoed him. “What do you mean, you had hoped? Didn’t you get it?”

  The man named John looked at him uncertainly and his blonde wife, her eyes picking up the uncertainty from his face, stared at Randolph too, half-fearfully. The racket from around the table, of laughter and talk and eating, was undiminished, but the three of them, the two men and the uneasy blonde woman, seemed to be enclosed in a sound-proof cocoon against which the noise beat dully, like the sound of surf from over many hills. Randolph felt that the Lithuanian was measuring him, deciding just what he might say and just how far he might go.

  “Say what you want to, John,” he said. “I want to know.”

  The woman exhaled softly and relaxed against her husband’s side, as though relieved that the silence was at last broken between them.

  “Didn’t we get it?” the Lithuanian said reflectively. “Well, at least we’re not being killed or thrown into jug. I guess that’s something …”

  “Oh, yes,” Randolph said, with a touch of sarcasm, “it’s something, all right.” The conversation was taking a vaguely familiar turn, a
nd he rebelled unconsciously against being sucked again into some emotional quicksands.

  “It’s something, Mr Randolph,” the Lithuanian said slowly, “but the truth of it is, that it’s not enough—not for intelligent people.”

  “That rests with you,” Randolph replied shortly. “The Government looks after you, doesn’t it?”

  “We don’t want to be Government wards,” the Lithuanian retorted quickly. “Some perhaps, but very few. We want to be neighbours.” He picked up his fork and twirled it in his fingers, seeking the words to express his feelings. “We want to belong.”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  “We want to, but we can’t do it by ourselves.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody’s got to help us. There should be clubs where we could meet with Australians and exchange ideas. There could be picnics and tours, so you could show us the country and the people, that must one day be our country and our people; we’ll never learn anything here, in Canberra. It could be done.”

  “And who’s going to do it?” Randolph had meant his inquiry to be caustic, but something happened to it between his brain and his tongue. He could not keep the interest out of his voice. The man had something, all right.

  “Writers, radio announcers, business-men,” the man called John said with warming enthusiasm. He did not raise his head, but looked up into Randolph’s face under heavy black brows. “Anyone who thinks of something besides horse-races and a long week-end. School-teachers, maybe.”

  If there were any hesitancy in his voice, it was because he was not sure of the ground on which he trod in talking in this way to Randolph. Randolph mistook it for something else.

  “School-teachers?” he said with a start. He returned the other’s glance narrowly, reading into it something that had not been intended. “Who told you I was a school-teacher?”

  “No one told me,” the Lithuanian replied coolly. “I didn’t know. But if you are, it’s a bad show for you to be working as a greasy.

  “I guess it’s my own business what I work as,” Randolph said dryly.

  “Yes, I guess so. I guess it’s your own business.” The man called John laughed bitterly.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking. I used to be an architect—not fully qualified, you know, but on the way. I thought it was my business, too, but someone else thought different. Now—I make bricks.”

  “Have a drink,” Randolph said. The talk was getting too near home. That this man’s past, whatever he thought and wanted and hoped for, should be pinned out for inspection like a frog on a tray of wax—that was all right. It was natural—you wanted to know all about them. But it didn’t work in reverse. He filled the other’s glass and his own. The blonde girl shook her head, smiling shyly at him.

  “Thank you,” the foreigner said. “It’s a pity to waste yourself, Mr Randolph. If the good men, the thinkers, give the game away, who takes over? And where does it lead to?”

  “Good luck,” Randolph said. He tilted his glass. Shut up. I’ve left that behind me. I’m not going back, ever.

  He opened his ears and his mind again to the noise of the other guests, and let their proximity flow round him like an insulation against the past that had so suddenly cropped up again. The girl Marika was singing softly in German, her green, oblique eyes fixed on Radinski’s rapt face. Randolph concentrated his ears and eyes on her. He would not let himself turn round, for he knew that the man called John, who had been an architect until someone who had never seen him or heard his name decided that he should be a labourer, was looking at him, accusingly, through the thick lenses of his glasses.

  “Come again, please,” Mama Kasnik said earnestly, as they were leaving. The party broke up fairly early, and the old people, the girl between them with an arm round the waist of each, walked to the gate to say good-bye to Radinski and his two friends, who were the last to leave. The Pole bent over her hand and kissed it with simple courtesy.

  “Good night, Felix,” the girl said, extending her hand. Radinski took it gravely, but did not kiss her. “Good night, Mr Randolph, Mr Murdoch.”

  They both held her hand for a moment, but Murdoch felt its soft pressure long after he let it go. She was cool and serene, but something seemed to simmer underneath her calm. And she smelled of something—not just soap, or even perfume, but something that was part of her, and the night. It tingled in his nostrils all the way back to Riverslake.

  “Nice people, Felix,” Randolph said, as they walked along the dark and deserted road. “Mama and Papa—and of course, Marika and the guests. I enjoyed myself.”

  “Please?”

  “I had a good time—you know, a good time?”

  “Yes, yes. I am glad.” The Pole nodded. “We make party, we like party. Nothing else to do in Canberra, nothing for see. Cinema, cinema, cinema—no good.”

  “You ought to go to the dances, Felix,” Murdoch advised. “They’re much better than the pictures.”

  “Who dance with me?” Radinski demanded with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “At dance, at Albert Hall, all girls say no for dance with bloody Balt.”

  “What, won’t the girls dance with you?” Randolph demanded.

  “Very not dance!” Radinski said emphatically. “If Polish girl at dance, Australian man dance with her, say, ‘Come outside,’ say ‘You have drink.’ Oh, yes. But Polish man not dance with Australian girl, or sometimes fight.”

  “God almighty!” Randolph breathed.

  “Is not good,” Radinski agreed. “But why? You can tell me why, yes?”

  Why? As he listened to the Pole’s broken speech, that for all its awkwardness carried the full freight of the resentment he felt, a gnawing shame flooded over Randolph. It seemed that there must be a mean and arrogant streak in all Australians that had nothing in common with the sunny and generous land that nurtured them. With room and crying need for another ten millions of population, they seemed determined to give these immigrants as rough a time as they were able, denying them and insulting them in much the same way as he could dimly remember another generation treating the English migrants, the Pommies of his youth. Blasted dances! he thought bitterly. If they can’t get together at dances, where the hell will they?

  The shame flushed hotly over him again as he realized just where the bulk of the blame would lie if they didn’t—he had seen his countrymen in action too often, inside Australia and out of it, bumptious, arrogant, obscene, crafty, open-handed, courageous, magnificent. Christ, he cried silently, what’s wrong with us? What in hell makes us the way we are?

  No matter how they chewed the rag about it in Parliament, no matter how many politicians made the grand tour and no matter how many liners they hired to bring back their human bag, this was where all their schemes were going to bog down, because most Australians who came in contact with the new-comers regarded them with suspicion and even with blind hatred instead of the pity and understanding they would evoke in any civilized people. No, not even pity, even, for few of them, except the very old and the very young, were even remotely pitiful. They were just people, who wanted nothing but understanding and a chance to rebuild what through no fault of their own had been torn down. Randolph clenched his hands inside his trousers pockets and ground his teeth in silence, unable to answer the Pole’s question.

  Murdoch broke into his thoughts. The youngster half realized the same things, but from a different angle. The outcome of the immigration scheme and its effect on Australia did not concern him; but he did feel the petty injustices heaped on the men amongst the new-comers who had become his friends; a man like Novikowsky having to take abuse from Zigfeld and Condamine and shrug it off, or a good little bloke like Felix not being able to have a good time at a dance. That the evil penetrated deeper and spread further never occurred to him, or if it did he considered it too big for a kitchenman at Riverslake. Me
n were paid good money to fix things like that—let them earn it.

  “There’s a good dance at the Causeway next week, Felix,” he suggested. “Why don’t you come to it?”

  “The Causeway?” Randolph said incredulously. “Doing a bit of slumming?”

  “Oh, bull!” Murdoch snorted. “The Causeway’s all right—a damned sight better than the turns up at the Albert Hall. Anyway, it’s a football dance, not just one of those drac turns they slap on for the locals. The blokes in the team’ll see that nothing happens.”

  “Apart from a couple of bottle fights and a visit from the cops?”

  “Well, what d’you want for three bob—Tommy Burns?” Murdoch turned to Radinski, who had been listening to their talk with a pucker between his eyes. “What about coming to this dance, Felix? It’ll be a good show, and you could bring Marika.”

  Randolph looked at him sideways. The effect of Radinski’s girl on Murdoch had not been lost on him.

  “Oh,” he said, with a laugh in his voice. He was glad that the subject had been diverted to something more trivial. “And who’ll you bring?”

  “Thora, or one of the mob,” Murdoch said casually, so casually that Randolph laughed softly. “I’m easy—you could bring Linda and we’ll make it a party.”

  “That’s big of you. Did you fix it with Paul?”

  “Get off my flaming back—it’s only a suggestion. I thought if we all went together, then we could dance all in the one mob, and Felix would have a good time. It’d give him a different slant on things, maybe. Will you be in it, or not?”

  “Well, I don’t see why not,” Randolph said guardedly. “But I’m not so keen about taking Linda.”