Back To Billabong - Mary Grant Bruce
"Also the tarantulas that drop from everywhere, especially into food,"
added Tommy, dimpling. "And the bush fires every Sunday morning, and the
blacks that rush down--what is it? Oh yes, the Block, casting boomerangs
about! There is much spare time on a troopship, Mrs. Linton, and all of
it was employed by the subalterns in telling us what we might expect!"
"I can quite imagine it," Mrs. Geoffrey laughed. "Oh well, Billabong
will be a good breaking-in. Norah tells me you are going up there at
once?"
"Well, not quite at once," Bob said. "We think it is only fair to let
them get home without encumbrances, and as we have to present other
letters of introduction in Melbourne, we'll stay here for a few days,
and then follow them."
"Then you must come out to us," said Mrs. Geoffrey firmly. "No use to
ask my brother-in-law, of course; he has just one idea, and that is to
stay at Scott's, get his luggage through the customs, see his bankers as
quickly as possible, and then get back to his beloved Billabong. If we
get them out to dinner to-night, it's as much as we can hope for. But
you two must come to us--we can run you here and there in the car to see
the people you want." She put aside their protests, laughing. "Why, you
don't know how much we like capturing bran-new English people--and think
what you have done for our boys all these four years! From what they
tell us, if anyone wants to go anywhere or do anything he likes in
England, all he has to do is to wear a digger's slouched hat!"
They stopped in Collins Street, and in a moment the new-comers, slightly
bewildered, found themselves in a tea-room; a new thing in tea-rooms
to Tommy and Bob, since it was a vision of russet and gold--brown wood,
masses of golden wattle and daffodils, and of bronze gum leaves; and
even the waitresses flitted about in russet-brown dresses. David Linton
hung back at the doorway.
"It isn't a party, Winifred?"
"My dear David, only a few people who want to welcome you back. Really,
you're just as bad as ever!" said his sister-in-law, half vexed. "The
children's school friends, too--Jim and Wally's mates. You can't expect
us to get you all back, after so long--and with all those honours,
too!--and not give people a chance of shaking hands with you." At which
point Norah said, gently, but firmly, "Dad, you mustn't be naughty," and
led him within.
Some one grasped his hand. "Well, Linton, old chap!" And he found
himself greeting the head of a big "stock and station" firm. Some one
else clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to meet his banker;
behind them towered half a dozen old squatter friends, with fellow
clubmen, all trying at once to get hold of his hand. David Linton's
constitutional shyness melted in the heartiness of their greeting.
Beyond them Norah seemed to be the centre of a mass of girls, one of
whom presently detached herself, and came to him. He said in amazement,
"Why, it's Jean Yorke--and grown up!" and actually kissed her, to the
great delight of Jean, who had been an old mate of Norah's. As for Jim
and Wally, they were scarcely to be seen, save for their heads, in
a cluster of lads, who were pounding and smiting them wherever space
permitted. Altogether, it was a confused and cheerful gathering, and,
much to the embarrassment of the russet-brown waitresses, the last thing
anybody thought of was tea.
Still, when the buzz of greetings had subsided, and at length "morning
tea"--that time-honoured institution of Australia--had a chance to
appear, it was of a nature to make the new arrivals gasp. The last four
years in England had fairly broken people in to plain living; dainties
and luxuries had disappeared so completely from the table that every one
had ceased to think about them. Therefore, the Linton party blinked in
amazement at the details of what to Melbourne was a very ordinary tea,
and, forgetting its manners, broke into open comment.
"Cakes!" said Wally faintly. "Jean, you might catch me if I swoon."
"What's wrong with the cakes?" said Jean Yorke, bewildered.
"Nothing--except that they are cakes! Jim!"--he caught at his chum's
sleeve--"that substance in enormous layers in that enormous slice is
called cream. Real cream. When did you see cream last, my son?"
"I'm hanged if I know," Jim answered, grinning. "About four years ago, I
suppose. I'd forgotten it existed. And the cakes look as if they didn't
fall to pieces if you touched 'em."
"What, do the English cakes do that?" asked a pained aunt.
"Rather--when there are any. It's something they take out of the war
flour--what is it, Nor?"
"Gluten, I think it's called," said Norah doubtfully. "It's something
that ordinarily makes flour stick together, but they took it all out of
the war flour, and put it into munitions. So everything you made with
war flour was apt to be dry and crumbly. And when you made cakes with
it, and war sugar, which was half full of queer stuff like plaster of
paris, and egg substitute, because eggs--when you could get them--were
eightpence halfpenny, and butter substitute (and very little of
that)--well, they weren't exactly what you would call cakes at all."
"Butter substitute!" said the aunt faintly. "I could not live without
good butter!"
"Bless you, Norah and dad hadn't tasted butter for nearly three years
before they came on board the Nauru," said Jim. "It was affecting to see
Nor greeting a pat of butter for the first time!"
"But you had some butter--we read about it."
"Two ounces per head weekly--but they put all their ration into the
'Tired People's food,'" said Wally.
"It wasn't only dad and I," said Norah quickly. "Every soul we employed
did that--Irish maids, butler, cook-lady and all. And we hadn't to ask
one of them to do it. The Tired People always had butter. They used to
think we had a special allowance from Government, but we hadn't."
"Dear me!" said the aunt. "It's too terrible. And meat?"
"Oh, meat was very short," said Norah, laughing. "Of course we were
fairly well off for our Tired People, because they had soldiers'
rations; but even so, we almost forgot what a joint looked like. Stews
and hot pots and made dishes--you call them that because you make them
of anything but meat! We became very clever at camouflaging meat dishes.
Somehow the Tired People ate them all. But"--she paused, laughing--"you
know I never thought I could feel greedy for meat. And I did--I just
longed, quite often, for a chop!"
"And could you not have one?"
"Gracious, no!" Norah looked amazed. "Chops were quite the most
extravagant thing of all--too much bone. You see, the meat ration
included bone and fat, and I can tell you we were pretty badly worried
if we got too much of either."
"To think of all she knows," said the aunt, regarding her with a tearful
eye. Whereat Norah laughed.
"Oh, I could tell you lots of homely things," she said. "How we always
boiled bones for soup at least four times before we looked on them as
used up; and how we worked up sheep's heads into the most wonderful
chicken galantines; and--but would you mind if I ate some walnut cake
instead? It's making me tremble even to look at it."
After which Jean Yorke and the russet-brown waitresses vied in plying
the new-comers with the most elaborate cakes, until even Jim and Wally
begged for mercy.
"You ought to remember we're not used to these things," Wally protested,
waving away a strange erection of cream, icing and wafery pastry. "If
I ate that it would go to my head, and I'd have to be removed in an
ambulance. And the awful part of it is--I want to eat it. Take it out of
my sight, Jean, or I'll yield, and the consequences will be awful."
"But it is too dreadful to think of all you poor souls have gone
through," said an aunt soulfully. "How little we in Australia know of
what war means!"
"But if it comes to that, how little we knew!" Norah exclaimed, "Why,
there we were, only a few miles from the fighting--you could hear the
guns on a still day, when a big action was going on; and except for the
people who came directly in the way of air raids, England knew little or
nothing of war: I mean, war as the people of Belgium and Northern France
knew it. The worst we had to admit was that we didn't get everything we
liked to eat, and that was a joke compared to what we might have had.
Hardly anyone in England went cold or hungry through the war, and so
I don't think we knew much about it either." She broke off blushing
furiously, to find every one listening to her. "I didn't mean to make a
speech."
"It's quite true, though," said her father, "even if you did make a
speech about it. There were privations in some cases, no doubt--invalids
sometimes suffered, or men used to a heavy meat diet, whose wives had
not knowledge--or fuel--enough to cook substitutes properly. On the
other hand, there was no unemployment, and the poor were better fed than
they had ever been, since every one could make good wages at munitions.
The death rate among civilians was very much lower than usual. People
learned to eat less, and not to waste--and the pre-war waste in England
was terrific. And I say--and I think we all say--that anyone who
grumbles about 'privations' in England deserves to know what real war
means--as the women of Belgium know it."
He stopped, and Norah regarded him with great pride, since his remarks
were usually strictly limited to the fewest possible words.
"Well, it's rather refreshing to hear you talk," remarked another
squatter. "A good many people have come back telling most pathetic tales
of all they had to endure. I suppose, though, that some were worse off
than you?"
"Oh, certainly," David Linton said. "We knew one Australian, an
officer's wife, who was stranded in a remote corner of South Wales
with two servants and two babies; it was just at the time of greatest
scarcity before compulsory rationing began, when most of the food
coming in was kept in the big towns and the Midlands. That woman could
certainly get milk for her youngsters; but for three months the only
foods she and her maids were sure of getting were war bread, potatoes,
haricot beans and salt herrings. She was a good way from the nearest
town, and there was deep snow most of the time. There was no carting out
to her place, and by the time she could get into the town most of the
food shops would be empty."
"And if you saw the salt herrings!" said Norah. "They come down from
Scotland, packed thousands in a barrel. They're about the length and
thickness of a comb, and if you soak them for a day in warm water and
then boil them, you can begin to think about them as a possible food.
But Mrs. Burton and her maids ate them for three months. She didn't seem
to think she had anything to grumble about--in fact, she said she still
felt friendly towards potatoes, but she hoped she'd never see a herring
or a bean again!"
"She had her own troubles about coal, too," remarked Jim. "The only coal
down there is a horrible brownish stuff that falls into damp slack if
you look at it; it's generally used only for furnaces, but people had
to draw their coal allowance from the nearest supply, and it was all she
could get. The only way to use the beastly stuff was to mix it with wet,
salt mud from the river into what the country people call culm--then you
cut it into blocks, or make balls of it, and it hardens. She
couldn't get a man to do it for her, and she used to mix all her culm
herself--and you wouldn't call it woman's work, even in Germany. But she
used to tell it as a kind of joke."
"She used to look on herself as one of the really lucky women," said
David Linton, "because her husband didn't get killed. And I think she
was--herrings and culm and all. And we're even luckier, since we've all
come back to Australia, and to such a welcome as you've given us." He
stood up, smiling his slow, pleasant smile at them all. "And now I
think I've got to go chasing the Customs, if I'm ever to disinter our
belongings and get home."
The girls took possession of Norah and Tommy, who left their menfolk
to the drear business of clearing luggage, and thankfully spent the
afternoon in the Botanical Gardens, glad to have firm ground under
their feet after six weeks of sea. Then they all met at dinner at Mrs.
Geoffrey Linton's, where they found her son, Cecil, who greeted Norah
with something of embarrassment. There was an old score between Norah
and Cecil Linton, although they had not seen each other for years;
but its memory died out in Norah's heart as she looked at her cousin's
military badge and noted that he dragged one foot slightly. Indeed,
there was no room in Norah's heart for anything but happiness.
The aunts and uncles tried hard to persuade David Linton to remain a few
days in Melbourne, but he shook his head.
"I've been homesick for five years," he told them. "And it feels like
fifty. I'll come down again, I promise--yes, and bring the children, of
course. But just now I can't wait. I've got to get home."
"That old Billabong!" said Mrs. Geoffrey, half laughing. "Are you going
to live and die in the backblocks, David?"
"Why, certainly--at least I hope so," he said. "I suppose there must
be lucid intervals, now that Norah is grown up, or imagines she is--not
that she seems to me a bit different from the time when her hair was
down. Still I suppose I must bring her to town, and let her make her
curtsy at Government House, and do all the correct things--"
Some one slipped a hand through his arm.
"But when we've done them, daddy," said Norah cheerfully, "there will
always be Billabong to go home to!"
CHAPTER X
BILLABONG
"Will it be fine, Murty?"
The person addressed made no answer for a moment, continuing to stare
at the western horizon with his eyes wrinkled and his face anxious. He
turned presently; a tall, grizzled man, with the stooping shoulders
and the slightly bowed legs that are the heritage of those who spend
nine-tenths of their time in the saddle.
"Sorra a one of me knows," he said. "It's one of thim unchancy days that
might be annything. Have ye looked at the glass?"
"It's mejum," replied the first speaker. She was a vast woman, with a
broad, kindly face, lit by shrewd and twinkling blue eyes, dressed, as
was her custom, in a starched blue print, with a snowy apron. "Mejum
only. But I don't feel comferable at that there bank of clouds, Murty."
"I'd not say meself it was good," admitted Murty O'Toole, head stockman
on the Billabong run. He looked again at the doubtful sky, and then back
to Mrs. Brown. "Have ye no corns, at all, that 'ud be shootin' on ye if
rain was coming?"
"Corns I 'ave, indeed," said Mrs. Brown, with the sigh of one who admits
that she is but human. "But no--they ain't shootin' worth speakin'
about, Murty. Nor me rheumatic knee ain't givin' tongue, as Master Jim
would say."
"Yerra, that's all to the good," said the stockman, much cheered. "I'll
not look at the ould sky anny longer--leastways, not till I have that
cup of tea ye were speakin' about."
"Come in then," said Mrs. Brown, leading the way into the kitchen--a
huge place so glittering with cleanliness and polish that it almost hurt
the eye. "Kettle's boilin'--I'll have it made in a jiffy. No, Murty,
you will not sit on that table. Pounds of bath-brick 'ave gone into me
tables this last week."
"Ye have them always that white I do not see how ye'd want them to be
whiter," remarked Murty, gazing round him. "But I niver see anything to
aiqual the shine ye have on them tins an' copper. And the stove is that
fine it's a shame to be cookin' with it." He looked with respect at the
black satin and silver of the stove, where leaping flames glowed redly.
"Well, I'll always say there isn't a heartsomer place to come into than
the Billabong kitchen. And isn't it the little misthress that thinks
so?"
"Bless her, she was always in and out of it from the time she could
toddle," said Mrs. Brown, pausing with the teapot in her hand. "And
she wasn't much more than toddlin' before she was at me to teach her
to cook. When she was twelve she could cook a dinner as well as anyone
twice her age. I never see the beat of her--handy as a man out on the
run, too--"
"She was that," said Murty solemnly. "Since she was a bit of a thing I
never see the bullock as could get away from her. And the ponies she'd
ride! There was nothin' ever looked through a bridle that cud frighten
her."
"Poof! Miss Norah didn't know what it was to be afraid," said Mrs.
Brown, filling the huge brown teapot. "Sometimes I've wished she was,
for me heart's been in me mouth often and often when I see her go
caperin' down the track on some mad-'eaded pony."
"An' there was niver a time when they was late home but you made sure
the whole lot of 'em was killed," said Murty, grinning. "I'd come in
here an' find you wit' all the funerals planned, so to speak--"
"Ah, go on! At least, I alwuz stayed at home when I was nervis," said
Mrs. Brown. "Who was it I've known catch an 'orse in the dark, an' go
off to look for 'em when they were a bit late? Not me, Mr. O'Toole!" She
filled his cup and handed it to him with a triumphant air.
"Yerra, I misremember doin' any such thing," said Murty, slightly
confused. "'Tis the way I was most likely goin' afther a sick bullock,
or it might be 'possum shootin'." He raised his cup and took a deep
draught; then, with a wry face, gazed at its contents. "I dunno is this
a new brand of tea you're afther usin', now? Sure, it looks pale."
Mrs. Brown cast a glance at the cup he held out, and gave a gasp of
horror.
"Well, not in all me born days 'ave I made tea an' forgot to put the tea
in!" she exclaimed, snatching it from his hand. "Don't you go an' tell
Dave and Mick, Murty, or I'll never hear the end of it. Lucky there's
plenty of hot water." She emptied the teapot swiftly, and refilled it,
this time with due regard to the tea-caddy.
"Now, Murty, don't you sit there grinnin' at me like a hyener--it isn't
every day I get Miss Norah home."
"It is not," said Murty, taking his renewed cup and a large piece of
bread and butter. "Sure, I'd not blame ye if ye fried bacon in the
tea-pot--not this morning. I dunno, meself, am I on me head or me heels.
All the men is much the same; they've been fallin' over each other,
tryin' to get a little bit of extra spit-an'-polish on the whole place.
I b'lieve Dave Boone wud 'a' set to work an' whitewashed the paddock
fences if I'd encouraged him at all."
"There's that Sarah," said Mrs. Brown. "Ornery days it takes me, an
alarum clock, an' Mary, to say nothin' of a wet sponge, to get her out
of bed. But bless you--these last three days she's up before the pair
of us, rubbin' an' polishin' in every corner. An' she an' 'Ogg at each
other's throats over flowers; she wantin' to pick every one to look
pretty in the 'ouse, an' 'Ogg wantin' every one to look pretty in the
garden."
"Well, Hogg's got enough an' to spare," was Murty's comment. "No union
touch about his work. I reckon he's put in sixteen hours a day at that
garden since we heard they were comin'."
"But there never was any union touch about Billabong," said Mrs. Brown.
"Not much! We all know when we're well off," said Murty. "I'll bet no
union was ever as good a boss as David Linton."
Two other men appeared at the kitchen door--Mick Shanahan and Dave
Boone--each wearing, in defiance of regulations, some battered remnant
of uniform that marked the "digger," while Mick, in addition, would walk
always with a slight limp. He was accustomed to say 'twas a mercy it
didn't hinder his profession--which, being that of a horsebreaker, freed
him, as a rule, from the necessity of much walking. Other men Billabong
had sent to the war, and not all of them had come back; the lonely
station had been a place of anxiety and of mourning. But to-day the
memories of the long years of fighting and waiting were blotted out in
joy.
"Come in, boys," Mrs. Brown nodded at the men. "Tea's ready. What's it
going to be?"
"Fine, I think," said Boone, replying to this somewhat indefinite
question with complete certainty as to the questioner's meaning. "I
seen you an' Murty pokin' your heads up at them clouds, but there ain't
nothin' in them." A smile spread over his good-looking, dark face.
"Bless you, it couldn't rain today, with Miss Norah comin' home!"
"I don't believe, meself, that Providence 'ud 'ave the 'eart," said Mrs.
Brown. "Picksher them now, all flyin' round and gettin' ready to start,
and snatchin' a bite of breakfast--"
"If I know Master Jim 'twill be no bite he'll snatch!" put in Mick.
"Well, all I 'ope is that the 'otel don't poison them," said Mrs.
Brown darkly. "I on'y stopped in a Melbin' 'otel once, and then I got
pot-o'-mine poisoning, or whatever they call it. I've 'eard they never
wash their saucepans!"
"No wonder you get rummy flavours in what you eat down there, if that's
so," said Dave. "Surprisin' what the digestions of them city people
learn to put up with. Well, I suppose you won't be addin' to their risks
by puttin' up much of a dinner for them to-day, Mrs. Brown." He grinned
wickedly.
"You go on, imperence!" said the lady. "If I let you look into the
larder now (w'ich I won't, along of knowin' you too well), there'd be
no gettin' you out to work to-day. Murty, that turkey weighed
five-and-thirty pound!"
"Sure he looked every ounce of it," said Murty. "I niver see his
aiqual--he was a regular Clydesdale of a bird!"
"I rose him from the aig meself," said Mrs. Brown, "and I don't think
I could 'a' brung meself to 'ave 'im killed for anythink less than them
comin' 'ome. As it was, I feel 'e's died a nobil death. An' 'e'll eat
beautiful, you mark my words."
"Well, it'll be something to think of the Boss at the head of his table,
investigatin' a Billabong turkey again," said Boone, putting down his
empty cup. "And as there's nothing more certain than that they'll all be
out at the stables d'reckly after dinner, wantin' to see the 'orses, you
an' I'd better go an' shine 'em up a bit more, Mick." They tramped out
of the kitchen, while Mrs. Brown waddled to the veranda and cast further
anxious glances at the bank of clouds lying westward.
Norah was watching them, too. She was sitting in the corner of the
compartment, as the swift train bore them northward, with her eyes glued
to the country flying past. Just for once the others did not matter to
her; her father, Jim, and Wally, each in his own corner, as they had
travelled so many times in the past, coming back from school. Then she
had had eyes only for them; to-day her soul was hungry for the dear
country she had not seen for so long. It lay bare enough in the early
winter--long stretches of stone-walled paddocks where the red soil
showed through the sparse, native grass; steep, stony hillsides, with
little sheep grazing on them--pygmies, after the great English sheep;
oases of irrigation, with the deep green of lucerne growing rank among
weed-fringed water-channels; and so on and on, past little towns
and tiny settlements, and now and then a stop at some place of more
importance. But Norah did not want the towns; she was homesick for the
open country, for the scent of the gum trees coming drifting in through
the open window, for the long, lonely plains where grazing cattle raised
lazy eyes to look at the roaring engine, or horses flung up nervous
heads and went racing away across the grass--more for the fun of it than
from fear. The gum trees called to her, beckoned to her; she forgot the
smooth perfection of the English landscape as she feasted her eyes on
the dear, untidy trees, whose dangling strips of bark seemed to wave to
her in greeting, telling her she was coming home. They passed a great
team of working bullocks in a wagon loaded with an enormous tree trunk;
twenty-four monsters, roan and red and speckled, with a great pair of
polled Angus in the lead; they plodded along in their own dust, their
driver beside them with his immense whip over his shoulder. Norah
pointed them out to the others with a quick exclamation, and Jim and
Wally came to look out from her window.
"By Jove, what a team!" said Jim. "Well, just at this moment I'd rather
see those fellows than the meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park--and I
had a private idea that that was the finest sight in the world!"
"Aren't you a jungly animal!" quoth Wally.
"Rather--just now," Jim rejoined. "Some day, I suppose, I'll be glad to
go back to London, and look at it all again. But just now there doesn't
seem to be anything to touch a fellow's own country--and that team of
old sloggers there is just a bit of it. Isn't it, old Nor?" She nodded
up at him; there was no need of words.
The morning was drawing towards noon when they came in sight of their
own little station: Cunjee, looking just as they had left it years ago,
its corrugated iron roofs gleaming in the sunlight, its one street green
with feathery pepper trees along each side. The train pulled up, and
they all tumbled out hastily; presumably the express wasted no more time
upon Cunjee than in days gone by, when it was necessary to hustle out
of the carriage, and to race along to the van, lest the whistle should
sound and your trunks be whisked away somewhere down the line.