Riverslake Read online

  “Just give me time.” Linda Spain leaned over and picked up the gin bottle. “Have a drink?”

  “Twist my arm.”

  “Use my glass—I’m not having any more. Save the washing up.” She poured the drink and stood up. “I’ll go in and get prettied. Excuse me?”

  “Sure.”

  Both men half-rose in their chairs as she moved towards the door. They sank back again as she passed through it into the lighted hall. They were silent for a moment, looking at the dog.

  “How’s things at the House, Paul?”

  “Same as usual.” Spain laughed. “Racing round like blue-tailed flies and getting nowhere. Poor old Silver’s just waking up to the fact that he mightn’t get back next election—there’ll be a lot of surprises, I think. Or rather, I hear—I don’t know much about it, really.”

  “When, December?”

  “I think so. I don’t know what he’d do if he went out.”

  “He wouldn’t be short of a few quid, would he?”

  “It’s not the dough, it’s the prestige. He should have retired ten years ago, when he still had a bit of his old shine. But it gets to be a habit, sitting in the House.”

  “Uh-huh!” Randolph grunted. “A damn good habit to latch onto, at fifteen hundred per!”

  What a set-up! he thought. A yob like old Silver getting fifteen hundred a year, and a nice, well-educated bloke like Paul doing all the work for chicken-feed. Topsy-turvy. No wonder things are going haywire.

  “Paul,” he said suddenly, “I’m washed up here.”

  “Washed up—you mean Riverslake?”

  “Huh.”

  “Sudden, isn’t it? What happened?”

  Randolph told him.

  “What’re you going to do, then, Bob? Move on?”

  “Yeah, some other hostel somewhere else. Time I had a change.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Spain said. Randolph looked at him sharply. The glow had faded out of the evening, and he could see little but the outline of Spain’s pale, small-boned face, moth-like in the darkness. Spain whistled softly. The raggedy dog ran in from the lawn, bounded onto his lap and wriggled ecstatically against his chest.

  “What do you mean, kid myself?”

  “No matter where you go, there’s no change. It’ll always be Riverslake. It always has been. There’s no difference.”

  Always Riverslake. It was what Randolph had always known, but always ignored. Always a new room, someone else’s grease to scrub off the walls, someone else’s stink to chase out of the air. Whether it was Yallourn, Bogong, the Snowy or Riverslake. Never any change.

  “What should I do?” he inquired with a sarcastic laugh. “I suppose I could put my name down for the first rocket to the moon!”

  “I suppose you could put your name down for the first train back to Western Australia,” Spain countered flatly.

  “And do what?”

  “We’ve had this out before.”

  Spain sat quiet in his deep chair, his hands, just visible, brushing the dog’s rough coat. Randolph watched him, his mind for once accepting the suggestion and coldly analysing it. To go back to teaching, to the blackboard and to the soul-destroying routine from which he had fled. To take up the only weapon he knew against Bellairs and what he stood for, against what had produced him and what he would in turn produce. The words were merely that—to go back home. But because he accepted them, he realized anew and with sharpened awareness just what they did mean. Once more to put his heart and soul and mind into bondage, perhaps to sink them there and never know with what result—if any. And why?

  He knew why, too. His thoughts fled again to the quiet elbow of the Murray River down by Albury, where he had sat fishing in the quiet of a summer’s evening. He saw again the movement of his line sending widening circles over the green satin of the water’s surface, and further down the river’s bank the platypus gambolling, floating on its back and flipping over and over, seal-like, disappearing and coming up again and repeating the whole performance, gently, secretly, for its audience of one.

  The circles it made on the water had met and entangled with the thinner circles round the cord line. Remembering them, Randolph once more felt his mind for a moment at one with the tiny mind of the creature in the water, knew again in a blinding instant of revelation the burden of age and loneliness and vastness that was his country’s story. He felt the bole of the gum-tree cool against his lips, and the unbidden tears stinging his eyelids.

  In the memory of that moment he knew why he should go home and what he should do, no matter what the doing might bring to himself. And in that moment, humbly, he might have accepted it, if the realization had been allowed to congeal. But Linda Spain began to sing softly, moving inside the house, her husky voice yearning in a sentimental ballad that shivered down his back and scattered any thought that was not of her. He sat in the darkness for a moment, yearning with her and for her, until with a surge of savage despair and almost of self-hatred, he remembered that the man sitting so quietly beside him was the same woman’s husband.

  “Paul,” he said abruptly, and despite his every effort his voice was strained and roughened, “Why don’t you come, tonight?” Anything, he felt, that might apply the brake that he himself was unable to put on. “Why don’t you come to this dance down at the Causeway?”

  “Me? I’m not cut out for it,” Spain replied quietly.

  “God, it would be better if you did!”

  “Better?”

  “Well—you know! Linda!” Christ, can’t you see?

  They were silent again for an interminable moment, until Spain began to speak, softly and almost impersonally.

  “You know what goes on, and you know that I know what goes on, and you must have wondered why I don’t do something about it, eh?”

  “Hell, I———”

  “Of course you do. Everybody does.” Spain went on as though the other had not spoken. Randolph realized that he was speaking more to himself, repeating aloud the arguments that occupied most of his waking hours, perhaps his sleep, too. “You never knew her before. God, she was lovely. She’s lovely now, but then———! And sweet, too. I don’t pretend to know what happened. Maybe I started her off, because I know that I was the first. Maybe something just cracked—I don’t know. But I do know that the girl I knew isn’t the one you know now. And I know that the one I knew will come back, just the way she went away. She’s sick, somehow. She cries at night, when she thinks I’m asleep.”

  He stopped speaking, and sat looking into the darkness where Randolph was sitting. His hand ran backwards and forwards on the dog’s back. Randolph could just see it, a pale blur in the shadows.

  “Paul———”

  “If she caught pneumonia, what would I do?” Spain demanded, ignoring him. “Would I walk out on her—would you? Well, this is the same. She’s sick, but one day, she’ll get better. She’ll forget Kerry and Silver and you and the others. All I’ve got to do is wait.”

  “Paul,” Randolph said again, quietly, “Linda and me. I’ve never—we’ve never———”

  God almighty, how did you tell a man that you’d never laid off with his wife?

  “I know,” Spain said. “I knew it after the first couple of times I met you. I knew how it’d be, and I’ve thought that maybe you’d be the last. Kerry only lasted a while, and you didn’t even———”

  He stopped speaking, and Randolph thought, with sudden pity, Hell, he thinks I didn’t because I couldn’t!

  “When they’re through with her, she’ll be mine again,” Spain went on. “I don’t ask you to understand my slant. I had her at the start, and I’ll have her again at the finish. After a few years, what happened in between won’t matter.”

  Randolph stared at his dim outline, unbelievingly.

  “God,” he whispered, “you must love her!”<
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  “Yes, I love her,” Spain replied steadily. “I loved her then and I love her now. I’ll always love her, and I’m not sorry for myself over it. When I married, it was for good—it was for better or for worse, and until we both die. Not until one of us got the chance to cut adrift. Divorce doesn’t enter into my calculations—and it’s not only religion, either. It’s the gutless way, divorce.”

  Randolph was silent, feeling the blood mount into his face. Spain leaned forward, placed a hand on his shoulder and let it fall.

  “I’m sorry, Bob, I wasn’t thinking.”

  “That’s all right,” Randolph muttered, “but how did you know?”

  “Kerry hinted a bit, and then I had to look over some of the papers from the Security boys. It was all in there. I’ve known all along.”

  “It must have given you quite a laugh. I couldn’t bowl my own hoop, and here I am, trying to put a spoke into yours.”

  “It made no difference.”

  “Maybe you’re right about the gutless part of it,” Randolph said, with reflective bitterness. “But what do you do, just hang round and wait until you go batty with it, and slit your own throat or someone else’s?”

  “You stopped loving her.”

  “I started hating her,” Randolph said coldly.

  “Then you never loved her at all.”

  “You’d know! I loved her, but a war intervened. A war, and other things.”

  “And now?” There was no idle, avid curiosity in Spain’s voice. It was gently puzzled, as though he were trying to fathom a man who could so easily stop loving, as he would turn off the flow from a tap. “You’ve got to love something!”

  “I do.” I love your wife—aren’t you a wake-up to that yet, or what have I got to do to wake you up? The words trembled on his lips, but he held them back. “I love this,” he said, instead. He passed a hand, invisible to both of them in the darkness, across the star-flecked patches of sky that showed between the trees. As he did it, his love became a real thing that settled like an egg in his throat and filled his chest to bursting point. To overcome it, he laughed shortly. “It’s less demanding, in the long run.”

  “You’re mistaken about that, too,” Spain said thoughtfully. “Unless you’re prepared to divorce Australia, too, when the going gets rough. Are you?”

  The headlights of a car swept into the street, thinning the undersides of the trees, and pulled up in front of the house.

  “The taxi,” Randolph announced, looking at the luminous dial of his watch. “Just on time.”

  “Yes, just in time.” There was no mistaking the meaning in Spain’s words. He leaned forward towards the door. “Taxi, darling!”

  Almost as he spoke, Linda Spain appeared and stood for a moment against the light from the hall.

  “I’m ready,” she cried gaily, twirling her skirt in front of them. “Do?”

  “Do,” Spain said. “Look after her, Bob.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Good night, old slow-poke.” She stooped and kissed Spain on the cheek, patting the dog as she did so. “Tossle, darling, be a good girl while mummy’s out!”

  “Don’t keep the cab waiting,” Spain said. “Good night, Bob—have a good time.”

  Randolph took the woman’s arm and walked down the path. At the gate he half turned. The light from the opened doorway flooded across Spain where he sat in the chair with the dog in his lap. Randolph could not see his face.

  “Be seeing you,” he called softly, and followed Spain’s wife out to the taxi.

  On the way to the Causeway they called first to pick up Murdoch at the home of the girl he was taking to the dance, and then at Mama Kasnik’s, where they had arranged to meet Radinski and Marika.

  Murdoch went to bring them to the car. He stood awkwardly at the door while the old lady kissed the girl on the cheek. He sensed hostility in the glance she threw him, though Papa Kasnik patted him on the shoulder and smiled into his face.

  “Not late, com’ home,” she admonished, brushing a loose hair from the girl’s shoulder. “Tomorrow, must work!”

  She said something sharply to Felix, in German. Her husband muttered uncomfortably, and Radinski bowed gravely. Murdoch, his eyes on the girl, saw a faint blush colour her cheeks.

  “What did Mama Kasnik say?” he asked, as they walked down the path to the car. “Is she crooked about something?”

  “Not crooked.” Radinski shrugged off his embarrassment. “She say for Marika, no beer, no wine.”

  “I don’t think she likes me, much,” Murdoch said, following the train of thought that had prompted him to ask the question.

  The girl laid her hand for a moment on his arm.

  “Mama, maybe like after,” she said uneasily. She was remembering what the old lady had said to her just before Radinski arrived—that Murdoch was probably up to no good. He was charming enough, but he would have to be watched. It was what she had said to Radinski, too, as they left the doorway of her room. “Mama not like it new people,” she explained, smiling at him placatingly.

  As they stopped beside the car Linda Spain thrust out her head. Her eyes swept quickly over Marika, taking in the simple top-coat and the slim frock that showed beneath it, moved on to Radinski and stopped there. Murdoch introduced them through the opened door of the car.

  “Come on, Felix, you get in the back. Marika can sit on your knee. Thora and me are in the front.”

  “Come on, Felix,” Linda Spain said, patting the seat beside her invitingly as Radinski clambered into the car. “Keep me warm!”

  “Coals to Newcastle, that!” Murdoch observed dryly, as they moved off. Randolph chuckled, and Linda shot him a glance of mild annoyance.

  It was only a short drive to the Causeway. The car soon turned off the main road, crossed the train lines and threw its golden beams ahead amongst the sordid jumble of dumps, small factories, and unpainted wooden shacks, littered with rubbish and ugly with neglect. The road was unpaved, and water-filled pot-holes bumped the occupants of the car roughly as it crawled over them.

  “Struth, what a road!” the driver complained. “It’s worth double fares even to come down here!”

  “It’s certainly some dump,” Murdoch agreed. “A bit different from the joints up on Mugga Way!”

  “They cater for all tastes,” Randolph observed, peering through the side window at the dismal slum around them. “Red Hill for the high life, the Causeway for the low.”

  “And what about Knoll Crescent?” Linda Spain said tartly, referring to her own address. “Just what you want, eh—the half-way house?” She was still ruffled by Murdoch’s earlier crack.

  “You said that,” Randolph told her urbanely. “Anyway, shift this mob to Mugga Way, and it’d be a dump in no time. People make slums—slums don’t make people.”

  The taxi came to a halt in a wide, brilliantly lit space of gravelled ground that surrounded a small weather-board hall. It was stark and ugly in the hard light, bare of any ornamentation and painted a drab terracotta colour. A crowd of men, with a sprinkling of girls in evening dress, milled round the double doors half-way along one side.

  “Look!” Murdoch’s girl, Thora, sat upright and peered through the windscreen. It was the first time she had spoken. “There’s a blue on!”

  “Queen Anne’s dead,” the driver observed laconically. “What did you expect—a prayer meeting?”

  “It’s on, all right,” Murdoch said. “Whoo! Look at that!”

  In the centre of the crowd, in a small cleared space, two men in their shirt sleeves swung punches at each other, drunkenly and without direction. As Murdoch spoke, a blow connected, and one of the brawlers staggered back against the crowd. It parted as he approached, and he sprawled on the ground. A couple of thin screams penetrated into the car.

  Randolph thought uneasily of what Spain had said to Hanraha
n—“Bob won’t take Linda to a rough-house.” Not much!

  “What about the gendarmes from the club, Kerry?” he demanded. “It looks as if they’ve fallen down on their job!”

  “That’s all right,” Murdoch replied. He was quite unruffled. “There’s always blues on outside. Inside’ll be all right.”

  Randolph shot a quick glance at the girl on Radinski’s lap. Her face was drawn with surprise and fear.

  “Sit in here for a moment,” he suggested. “We’ll wait until it breaks up before we take the girls in.”

  “It’ll cost you dough,” the driver said briefly.

  “We’ve got it.”

  A small skinny girl in a filmy blue frock darted from the crowd to where the victor stood swaying in the cleared space. From the car, they could see her face contorted with rage, but they could not hear the words with which she lashed him. Suddenly, her fist shot up in a jolting blow that landed flush on his chin. He looked at her groggily for a moment, unaware of what had hit him, and then collapsed in a heap on the gravel.

  “Well, hell!” Murdoch marvelled. “That was a turn up!”

  “It’s that Maisie,” the girl Thora announced. “She always fighting. She’s crackers about the feller that got knocked down, and every time he has a fight she has one too.”

  “Gott!” Radinski’s girl shrank against him. With one arm round her waist, he pressed her to him gently.

  “I think I’d rather take on her boy-friend than her!” Randolph remarked.

  Two other girls ran from the crowd and led the skinny one away. Someone raised the two fallen battlers from the gravel and half dragged, half led them into the shadows. The crowd broke up, some into the hall and some to adjacent cars.

  “Looks like being a good night!” Murdoch remarked with grim humour as he stepped out of the car. He nodded to one of the groups gathered round a car. It had just erupted into noisy laughter.

  A girl, young but with an impudent, red mouth and a tipsy grin, broke away from it and executed a sort of hula dance, weaving her hips and drawing a tensed hand up each flank to cup her hard little breasts. One of the men in the group said something to her. She swayed towards him, continuing her impromptu dance, until he caught her round the waist and drew her back into the party. The fugitive gleam of a lifted bottle parted the air above them.