Riverslake Page 20

  “I wondered if you’d mind my wireless while I’m in Sydney? If I leave it in my room it’ll go off.”

  “Sydney?”

  “Yeah, I’m going by the afternoon train. I’ve got a bit of business to fix up.”

  The phrase, ordinary enough, sounded curiously pompous coming from Charlesworth. He seemed to have matured suddenly. Randolph looked at him closely.

  “Going to sell one of your stations?”

  “Dip your eye! Here, take this damned thing!” Charlesworth thrust the wireless into Randolph’s hands. “I got to pack, yet—you should see my brothel!”

  “I can imagine!” Randolph said, but Charlesworth was already out of hearing. He turned to the manager. “Sydney? What’s he rushing off to Sydney for in such a hurry? Someone die?”

  “He told me it was to see about his eyes,” Carmichael said with a grin, “but his eyes are all right. I couldn’t kick, because he’s got three sickies coming to him. Cherchez la femme, as they say in Paris.”

  “Not Slim—he’s got one here in Canberra. Whatever else he might do, he’s dinkum with her!”

  “She might be going with him.”

  “Like hell! Her old woman’d have a fit. She thinks poor old Slim’s only one jump ahead of the dog-catcher. Anyway, I’ll dip over and put this in my room.”

  “O.K. Let me know if you hear anything about Radinski? I’d like to get a line on who’s putting the rumours around, and why.”

  “Sure.”

  Randolph walked away towards his room and Carmichael disappeared into the kitchen. Up on the hillside work ceased once more round the holes. The Maltese leaned on their picks, smoking uncomfortably, more for the hell of it than for any other reason, and glancing continually down to the kitchen. Bellairs stood with his back to them, looking over the camp. It was quiet and peaceful, bathed in a warm glow that had already some of the threat of the summer heat to follow. Only a few men were abroad amongst the huts—the yardmen were still busy in the lavatories and showers, and the kitchen staff had returned after their morning break. He swung round.

  “O.K.,” he said. “Kaput smoke. You, work. Understand? Me, go see friend. Amigo.” He waved towards the huts. “Understand?”

  “O.K., O.K.” The fair man nodded vigorously. He nodded at the three Maltese and tapped his chest, indicating that he would see that the work went on. “Me—this bastards …”

  “Good—O.K.!”

  Bellairs strode away up the slope, but changed his direction. Before he went up amongst the huts he would have to find out if Novikowsky was busy in the kitchen.

  Felix Radinski came out of his hut just as Randolph walked by with Charlesworth’s wireless. His face, usually pale and rather remote, was flushed, and his eyes lit up when he saw Randolph.

  “Ah, mister!” he exclaimed. “You go where?”

  “Over to my room.” Randolph dropped his glance to the wireless in his arms. “Taking this over.”

  “One moment, you wait?” Radinski pleaded. “I something have for show you.”

  “To show me, Felix. Where?”

  “My room. You come for my room—to my room. One minute?”

  “All right.”

  Radinski’s room, always overcrowded and in a muddle, looked as if it had been hit by a cyclone when Randolph pulled up outside the open door. The bed had been stripped, the sheets were hanging half in and half out of the window, and the gaily coloured woollen rug was crammed into a kerosene tin in the middle of the floor. Randolph looked questioningly at the Pole.

  “What the hell happened?”

  Radinski struck a comically dramatic attitude. “This morning,” he said seriously, “this cat come for my room, mee-ow, mee-ow. I give him milk. Still, mee-ow, mee-ow. I think, maybe babies come.” He waved his hands expansively in front of him, indicating a distended stomach. “This cat … you know?”

  “Yes, I know.” Randolph grinned. He was beginning to cotton on.

  “I must go for Kingston shops,” Radinski went on. “I put this cat from my room, so!” He made a sweeping movement of eviction. “But comes one dog, bark for my cat.”

  “So you brought it back into the room, eh?”

  “So.”

  “And what happened?” Randolph’s eyes were twinkling with amusement, but he kept a straight face.

  Radinski stole a sidelong glance at him and set his features sternly.

  “I come from Kingston shops,” he said, “and, la, la! This bastard cat bring on my bed five babies!” He pointed tragically at the sheets on the window-sill, and at the bed-cover in the bucket. “Much trouble is!”

  Randolph laughed heartily. Radinski was making a stern effort to be upset about the whole thing, but he was obviously as happy as a sand-boy.

  “Where is the cat, Felix?” Randolph asked. “In here?”

  Radinski lifted up a blanket that was draped over the bed, falling to the floor. It disclosed the cat and her five kittens snuggled into a cardboard box that had been transformed into a nest by the addition of one of Radinski’s sweaters.

  “Ah, pussy!” he said, with a boyish laugh. “You babies have, eh?” He looked uncertainly at Randolph. “Is happy cat, mister. Is babies, is milk, is little meat. Is best happy cat for camp!”

  “Happiest, not best happy,” Randolph corrected him.

  “Happiest—what is this? Is best cat, is happy cat, is best happy cat, no?”

  “All right, all right have it your way.” Randolph laughed. “But you can’t keep them in here, you know.”

  “Not for room?”

  “Hell, no! The manager very crook for you!”

  “So?” Radinski knelt and touched the cat’s head gently. She looked up, mewed soundlessly and passed her tongue across his hand. The Pole’s face glowed with pleasure.

  “Is young cat, mister,” he said, looking up at Randolph. “Is first babies. Maybe sick from babies, no?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is cold, night-time. Put for room today, put out tomorrow, is best, eh?”

  “O.K.,” Randolph said. “Don’t let the manager see them.”

  “Not see.” Radinski was still kneeling by the box, stroking the cat. Randolph looked down at him. He could almost feel the loneliness and the pent-up affection that flowed through the Balt’s fingers to the animal in the box.

  Good God, he thought, I hope I never get to the stage where a mess of kittens will mean so much to me!

  “I’ve got to go, Felix,” he said. “After lunch I go to see Mrs Kasnik.”

  “Ah, yes, Mama. Is good lady. Marika come for dance, O.K.”

  “Yes, I know.” Randolph’s glance was still on the kittens. “You marry soon, Felix. You, Marika, have many babies. They’re better than kittens.”

  “Yes,” Radinski said softly.

  Randolph looked at him sharply. There seemed to be a hesitant note in his voice, as if for some reason he doubted what he said.

  Randolph went up to Kingston during the afternoon break to see Mama Kasnik. The old lady met him at the gate and walked beside him up to the house. It was a hot afternoon, fully realizing the promise of the morning, and she had on a thin cotton frock that barely covered her bulging white calves. Her broad feet were thrust into straw slippers. Her iron-grey hair, which on the night of the party she had worn in a high pompadour over her forehead and a chignon on her thick neck, was now drawn severely back into a tight little bun. Its simplicity accentuated her high cheek-bones and broad flat face. It also gave her a serenity and homeliness that appealed to Randolph. She looked like any housewife in any country—except for the hint of Attila’s Huns in her narrow, slanting eyes.

  “Please,” she said, as she opened the door of her room. “Sit down?”

  The room was spotlessly clean but still hopelessly overcrowded. The smell of recent cooking hung on the warm air
.

  “You, cognac?” She opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of hospital brandy. “Good!” She gave the word the guttural German pronunciation.

  “Little, Mama,” Randolph cautioned her. Hell’s bells, brandy at this time of the day! He watched in silence as the old woman poured a glass of the spirit for each of them, then cut a slice of lemon and placed it across the mouth of the glass, heaping the slices with sugar. She raised her glass.

  “Pros’,” she said.

  “Good luck!”

  She removed the slice of lemon, drained the glass at a gulp and then ate the lemon, putting the rind on a plate on the table. Randolph followed suit, a couple of seconds behind her. The spirit burned his throat and chest, and the lemon tightened his palate pleasurably.

  “Mr Kerry,” Mama Kasnik said, directly. “Is good man?”

  Randolph was nonplussed by the abruptness of the question.

  “Yes,” he said hesitantly, “Kerry’s a good man.”

  “Like it ladies?”

  “Well, yes.” What’s she getting at? “You know———” Randolph shrugged as he had seen Murdoch do on innumerable occasions. “Comme ci, comme ça!”

  “Ah, so? Mr Kerry, Marika, for pictures go, Freitag.”

  “Oh?” Randolph said, still nonplussed, but beginning to see what the old woman was driving at.

  “Felix is good man,” Mama Kasnik announced simply. “Poland man—ach!” There was no doubting as to how she felt about Poles, and Randolph grinned to himself. She was an old battler! “But Felix, he is good man. Him, Marika—for ship, for Bat’urst, for here, Canberra, together. Soon, maybe———” She wrinkled her forehead a moment, then held up her worn, broad hand. “Ring,” she said, touching the old-fashioned circlet that was embedded in the flesh of her finger.

  “Marry?” Randolph suggested.

  She shook her head.

  “Engaged, then?”

  “Ja—engage. Maybe.”

  “Oh.” Randolph remembered that on the previous Friday night Murdoch had shaved and dressed with more than usual care, and had been more than usually cagey about where he was going, and with whom. Perhaps he had a bit of a guilty conscience, the fox.

  “Is not good,” the old woman said flatly. “Marika, Felix—maybe marry. Marika, Mr Kerry———” she shook her head. It was plain that if she were able to prevent it, no one would play ducks and drakes with her dead sister’s daughter.

  Randolph shrugged helplessly. Inevitably, against the grain, he felt that he was being drawn in amongst the tangled threads of these people’s lives. It was to discuss this that the old lady had asked him to visit her, and characteristically she had not wasted time in coming to the point. But what she thought he might be able to do about it, Randolph had no idea.

  “What do you want me to do, Mama?” he inquired.

  “You speak for Mr Kerry, no?” She leaned forward, her arms and her heavy bosom resting on the table, her broad face lined now with anxiety and inquiry and making no effort to conceal it. Almost supplication. “You friend for him. You speak?”

  “Well …”

  “Marika is baby, have nineteen years, only. Mr Kerry———” she shook her head, tangling with the language. “Speak maybe, mein liebling, mein liebling!” She wrapped her arms round her bosom, pantomiming a passionate embrace. “Understan’?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Ah, mister, for Felix, life very heavy. Heavy for Europe, heavy for here. Maybe if marry Marika, not so heavy.”

  “O.K., Mama,” Randolph said gently. God, what a contract—when they’re big enough, they’re old enough, and all’s fair in love and war. Kerry’s not going to appreciate being told what to do. “I’ll speak to him, Mama.”

  “Cognac,” Mama Kasnik said, pushing the bottle towards him across the oil-cloth on the table. Everything about the room was vividly coloured, with intricate and garish patterns of flowers—the oil-cloth, the curtains, the bedspreads and the cushion-covers. Like the peasant skirts that were so popular before the war, Randolph thought.

  He poured the golden spirit into the two glasses, while the old woman cut two slices of lemon. He looked at it. He had the feeling that he was being rewarded for doing a trick. Yes, I’ll talk to him all right, but what’ll he say back?

  “Pros’,” she said, and drained her glass. Randolph followed suit.

  “You like photograph?” she asked. Without waiting for a reply, she brought a bundle from a drawer in the dresser. She studied the top one for a moment, and then handed it to Randolph. “Kulnas,” she said, and he got the impression that she had resolutely ironed all the expression out of her voice. “Home for me.”

  It was a pleasant town on the banks of a broad river. There was a bridge and a belt of trees in the picture, and behind them the spires of two or three churches. The street from the bridge looked clean, and the trees shaded the footpath. A nice place in the summer, he thought. He looked up from the photograph and found her eyes on him.

  “Nice town, Mama,” he said.

  “Now finish. Come Krieg—boom, boom, boom! Kulnas, now finish.” She passed him the next photo, and as he took it poured out another two glasses of brandy. It was of two youths, sturdy, broad-shouldered, with broad smiling faces. They stood in a garden, their arms round each other’s shoulders. Strangely, their faces were familiar.

  Mama Kasnik pointed to the photo on the wall, beside the Lithuanian flag.

  “Same,” she said. “Me, two sons have.”

  Randolph sipped his drink. He closed his eyes momentarily. He wanted to close his ears, too, for if the two sons weren’t in Australia, there was some good reason why they weren’t. God, he thought, here it comes again!

  She leaned over to him, pointing. “This, Tomas,” she said, “This, John. Ah—John. Lovely boy. For me, much like. Tomas, for sport, for swim, for ladies much like. John, for me like.”

  Mumma’s boy, Randolph thought. Aloud he said, because she seemed to be expecting him to ask it, “Where are they now, Mama? In Europe still?” God, I hope they are.

  “John, dead for Germany.” Her voice was flat again. As she had spoken of the bombed town, so she spoke of her dead son. “Tomas———” She shrugged and tossed off the remainder of her drink.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Tomas for Russia go, prisoner of war.” The term slipped off her tongue easily. It was one she knew to the fullest of its meaning. She passed Randolph the next photo. “House for me, for Papa. Very nice, big—ten room. Ah, Gott!”

  Randolph studied the photograph. It was of a large house, square and solid, with steeply pitched roofs and attic windows. It was set in a garden with lawns, and behind it, through a grove of trees, there was a stretch of rolling pasture land. There were figures on the lawn, looking towards the camera, but it was impossible to make out who they were. Anyway, I wouldn’t recognize her as she was then, I suppose, Randolph thought.

  “This bombed, Mama?” he asked. “House finish, too?” Let’s have the lot!

  “Not bomb—Communismus take. Papa say for me, ‘Russia come, must run for Germany.’ Me, not—is house for me, you understand? Not run for Germany. Papa wait one week, say for me, ‘Mama Russia come. Must run for Germany.’ Me, ah, Gott!” She held her head in her hands, rocking it from side to side and moaning softly to herself, reliving the terror and the grief of it again. “Papa say, ‘Mama, quick, Communismus come,’ so—run for Germany. For train, for car, for walk. Heavy, heavy. Nothing have, nothing take.”

  “God,” Randolph muttered, his eyes still on the pictured house, the substantial two-story building in its fields and gardens. “You did the lot?”

  “Please?”

  “You lost all this?”

  “All. Tree, cow, much vegetable, I mak’t much jams, pickles, sauerkraut. Communismus, take. Much sheet, much spoon, much knife, silver, pi
cture, everything. Communismus take. Communismus, Communismus.” She looked at Randolph, and he saw naked fear in her eyes. “Mister, come Krieg, more? Come Communismus for Australia?”

  It was hot in the room, and Randolph could feel the spirit he had swallowed coursing through him like streaks of hot gold. A fly buzzed in the window-sill, batting its head against the glass. From the garden outside there came the curious dry croaking of hens ruffling themselves in the dust. His head felt uncomfortably thick, and he shook it to clear it. War? Of course, what’s going to stop it? Communists? Come here? They’re here already, the bastards, and running the joint!

  “No, Mama. No war, no Communists come to Australia. You’re safe here. You’re O.K.”

  The old woman dropped her head wearily on the table, pillowing it on her soft white arms.

  “Krieg, Krieg,” she moaned. “Mine John, mine Tomas! Ah, Gott!”

  Novikowsky picked up the last dirty dixie from the floor beside the sink and threw it into the hot, soapy water. The regular sink-man was having a day off, and Novikowsky was relieving him again; he did not like the job, and his lips curled fastidiously as he plunged his hands through the thick scum of grease and meat-scraps that floated on the surface of the water.

  He was alone in the kitchen. The cooks and the other kitchen-men had left as soon as they could finish the work to the satisfaction of Zigfeld’s ferreting eye. Murdoch, doing the vegetables by himself, had just flounced out, cursing the heat. It was quiet now and almost unbearably hot with the heat that pulsed out of the great range in almost tangible waves. The steamers sucked and gurgled in the stillness.

  As his hands washed and scrubbed the dixie Novikowsky’s mind was revolving round the roll of notes that he had left hidden beneath his mattress, wondering what he might accomplish with so much money. Murdoch’s suggestion of the night before worked in his mind like yeast. The desires of a thousand land-hungry peasant forebears stirred and thrust at his thoughts, and incoherent pictures, half formed, flashed before him of crops and animals and dark, furrowed fields of black soil—of a small house and a featureless someone who would be his wife and the mother of his children. It gave his presence in this new country, in this stinking kitchen, a meaning it had not had before, and for the first time since landing he felt that in some way he belonged, that he might yet have a life and a stake in Australia.