Without changing demeanour, the man produced an ornamental badge from the fob of his vest. He said, “I am an officer from the Department of Colonial Secretary. Our instructions have been to warn storekeepers of the new regulations via notice in local papers and then to enact punitive fines for violations. The fine as advertised is fifteen pounds.”
Tim leaned for a while against his counter. “Sweet Jesus!” he protested. “What a pernicious way of going about it! What was I to do?”
“You were to refuse to serve me. You may send the fine by telegraphic money transfer through any post office to the address on this form.”
The man handed him a penalty form already filled out. The name Timothy Shea was on it already, and the address.
“You had me as a bloody target!” Tim protested.
“Someone in the Commercial told me you were a pretty sentimental fellow, so I immediately put you down. It saves me time to fill out the summons first, and then you don’t have the aggravation of my presence in your store for longer than necessary. You can, of course, contest the summons in court, but it will be expensive, and I have the evidence.”
He lifted the sugar and biscuits and shook them by the necks of the bags which contained them.
“You could bloody pay me for them then.”
“No, these are forfeit. You should read the Act. Any sensible storekeeper would have it framed on the premises like butcher shops which have the Health Act on the wall. Then when plausible buggers like me come knocking, the storekeeper can point to the Act and say sorry.”
“I say bloody sorry all right,” said Tim fervently. He wished Kitty was here to give this fellow her style of treatment. Men were frightened of her contempt.
Bereft of her, Tim went to the door, opened it, and gestured the inspector out into the night. The man collected himself to leave.
“Do you ever ask yourself, if this is a fit way for a man to make a living?” asked Tim.
“You can put that question to a magistrate, old feller. And he’ll tell you that it’s quite fit. Show me a society that does not need regulation.” The man was actually smiling broadly. “Consider this as a living act of affection from the government of New South Wales. People hate it when they are made an example of. But there has to be examples, now wouldn’t you agree?” He saluted by touching the brim of his hat. “I don’t object at all if you relate your experiences to the other storekeepers in town.”
And he sauntered off to the Commercial, having brought down the hugest and most exemplary debt upon the household of Shea.
“I bet you consulted the Lodge at the Good Templars on who to hit!” Tim muttered for his own comfort before closing up.
The teeth marks of authority were on him. How they stung! He was reminded by a familiar spurt of panic of the manner in which Constable Hanney had also shown power’s teeth in Kelty’s pub. You were left by Hanney and the man from the Colonial Secretary’s, both of them clanging on about civilisation and authority, with a fearful awareness of the crust-thinness of the civilised world.
Fifteen pounds just about cleaned him out. Spiritually as well as otherwise. And now without a spouse to tether him to living flesh and the named world, he knew he faced more visitations.
From his bedroom he could hear Ellen Burke leaving the sleeping children, creeping out the back to the privy and then back to an aggrieved bed. As long as she wasn’t dreaming of that little hawker. The idea that she might be doing so rankled with him.
Turn on his side. Turn towards the south-east and its mountains, away from the tricky town, away from the deadly ocean eastwards downriver.
Yet that didn’t save him. His marriage bed sat in the bright sea, and he trembled to see Kitty and Mrs. Arnold walking the deck staring over the gunwales. There was terrible Missy. In the sea, afloat Ophelia-wise, a bridal veil drifting out widely around her head. She paddled like a calm character. Like a child of Albert Rochester’s playing tranquilly in the Macleay at joining her father in his deep purgatory in West Kempsey cemetery.
“Can’t you make things go faster?” he cried out to Kitty. Pleading with his callous wife. For he wanted to leave Ophelia and Missy behind. Kitty nudged Mrs. Arnold, one woman nudging another in sisterly wisdom. Men have no patience. Wanting everything at once. If they bore children, they’d want to give birth within two days and God how they’d whinge about the endless wait!
So Kitty excluded him in front of her cabin-mate, old Mrs. Arnold. So Kitty ignored his fear. Like a judgment, Missy rose up on a rope ladder. When her head struck the over-vivid sky, there would be lightning. He began to yell in protest, and anger and terror woke him.
Oh Jesus. He got up and walked around trembling for a while. Despite the fifteen pounds, the smiling inspector so proud of the impact of good order on the storekeepers in the Macleay, Tim knew he must now clearly authorise another five-bob Mass. For the unnamed intention.
Nine
SO WELL did Ellen Burke give off that air of resentful efficiency that Tim sheltered from it for hours at a time in the store. The Chronicle or Argus spread as if for wrapping goods, but in fact to comfort and illumine the day. Argus carrying a demented report that in Africa the New South Wales and New Zealand contingents bravely participated in a gymkhana on the Modder River in spite of shelling. Then Queen Natalie of Serbia retains her beauty by a diet of buttermilk and by washing her face in it. Exactly what the Macleay storekeeper needs to know. Some plague reported in the French Pacific in January. Cases in Noumea.
“Mr. John McDonald is leaving Coopernook for the Transvaal.” Coopernook a very quiet place, beside which Kempsey was London, Vienna, New York. So it went on—papers a great chaotic puzzle omniscient as God but not in as orderly a manner. Queen Natalie’s cheeks shoved up against Chinese silkworms and sick Kanakas in Noumea.
Amongst these drifts of information, Tim remotely heard one forenoon sudden wild laughter and whistles from Smith and Belgrave Streets. From the direction of the river appeared a strange bolt of colour and jolting, interrupted light flickered past the windows of the store. Mad, barefoot Johnny aboard mad pig-rooting, barebacked Pee Dee! Not so quickly did they flash by that Tim couldn’t tell Johnny had a rope halter on Pee Dee, but only that. Not even a saddle cloth. A pretty fragile means of containing all the flight there was in Pee Dee.
Running from behind the counter, one still hoped, even in a state of alarm, for Johnny’s continued life. His wiriness encouraged that margin of hope which edged the all-but-consuming alarm. Even in mid-rush for the door, with the known chance Pee Dee might make all decisions unnecessary by driving a hoof through the child’s head, Tim resolved at once that this flash beyond the glass meant it was time to send Johnny to Imelda. Yet fear choked a man and made him slow. The boards of the floor on which Johnny had sometimes been at least a placid artist canted up and delayed him.
Getting into the street, Tim saw almost at once far up Belgrave Street beyond Pee Dee and Johnny that, oh dear Jesus, there was a mob of cattle coming down from the direction of West. Pee Dee could not tolerate cattle. And on the footpaths of Belgrave, callous men and boys whistled and cat-called as the abominable horse went juddering and flicking and bucking down towards the cattle. What a frenzy when their beefy, pissy scent got to Pee Dee!
His flour-bag apron still wrapped around him, Tim went running after the horse. In a valley of heroes or mounted bushmen or whatever they were to be, there was no one of the criminal pedestrian cowards up Belgrave Street to run out and grap the mad horse’s halter. They whistled, and called, “Wild horses!”