Flo? What an ordinary tag for something all the elements of earth and sky strained so long to produce. Name of a barmaid. Name of an actress. Flo. Now may your servant depart. At the sounding of that ordinary, bush town, bushweek, jovial name. Name from a picnic to Watson’s Bay. Name of laughter and half a glass of gin after the play. Flo, bloody Flo.
Ernie said, “Have you seen this woman, Mr. Malcolm? Doesn’t look familiar, constable. My sweet little actress. What does that prick Ernie Malcolm think? He thinks the harm’s done already. He cries out and bites his knuckles in private, in his office, behind the door. Harm’s done and can’t be unravelled by a pillar of society coming forward and saying, I took Flo to Watson’s Bay. Flo came here to let me know. No need for me to say that with a big bullet-headed idiot like Hanney making notes and bloody sniffing. I wrote a letter to keep him on that particular job, the hopeless bastard.”
Committing Missy to her dreary route with Constable Hanney! That was a crime, but by his tormented face, Ernie had already discovered the fact for himself.
“No use telling anyone the truth that I never touched the girl. Winnie knew I wanted to touch. The world is too much with us, says Winnie. I can’t explain the excitement, Tim, when I heard of Albert Rochester and the rescue. And Habash talking like a fountain, praising you. Can’t explain the excitement. Thinking, raise a hero in Flo’s name. Bring him forward, let Flo fall into the shadow. Open the bridge and fill the passageway with a screen of bloody heroes. Winnie knew straight away what I was up to, and so we had it out. Over your bravery, Tim. Over Albert Rochester’s remains, the great marriage brawl. Things never went well again. A sober woman. A bloody gin fiend in a week flat! Bloody took to it with a passion!”
Ernie shook his head and sat again. “What can you do with that photograph there?”
“I don’t want to do too much, Ernie. The thing is, I’ve come to the furthest place in the world. If I’m pushed out, it’s the bloody void for me. Not Queensland, do you understand? The bloody void.”
“I can resist any story you spread, Tim. I have plenty of friends.”
“Do they include a new editor of the Chronicle, whoever that may be? Winnie spoke to me, Ernie. Passed the photograph to me. It has to be used for purposes she would approve of.”
They both speculated in silence on this.
“If I yield to you on this, you’ll be back with that picture every week.”
“Only if my customers are warned off, and my suppliers. You know me well enough, Ernie. What I desire is a peaceful life.”
“I never wanted anything but a peaceful life for you, Tim. Until you started to write those things.”
Tim shook his head. “If you still believe I wrote them, watch for the Offhand’s letter of apology.”
Ernie Malcolm shrugged. “Purposes Winnie would approve,” he said.
“Write me the letter of recommendation. Or rather, write Kitty one.”
Ernie inhaled and reached for a sheet of correspondence paper.
The letter Ernie and Tim devised, and took to have typed out on Ernie’s huge typewriter by Miss Pollack, read well enough.
Dear Sir,
This to introduce to you Mrs. Katherine Shea of Belgrave Street, Kempsey, an exemplary member of the community. When her husband’s business fell into unfortunate debt, she acquitted the total amount as soon as she knew about it. I have no hesitation in recommending her to you on the grounds of her business ability, her high moral values, and her reliability in commercial matters. I do so in the highest terms possible.
Beneath Miss Pollack’s long fingers, the letter of rescue bloomed. And though Tim might have inherited Bandy as a brother-in-law, fellow believer and shareholder, he had avoided having him as master. His master was Kitty, and he was at peace.
Returning to T. Shea—General Store, Tim made a detour to the bridge, where its planking rose out over the water and threw a shade over the river bank. Here he tore Winnie’s envelope and Missy’s photograph to pieces and floated them downstream. The river would obscure with its silt every fragment.
Missy now was indefinitely blended with her ancestors.
The Close
AS THE AUSTRALIAN AUTUMN brought in temperate air, the Macleay newspapers let people know that Mr. Bandy Habash had bought the large Clarence River drapery store previously owned by Mr. F. O. Bentley. This gave Bandy instantly a place in New South Wales Northern Rivers society, and Mamie told Tim and Kitty that since Mr. F. O. Bentley was a member of the Grafton Jockey Club, he had been disposed to write Bandy a letter of introduction to the more junior Macleay Turf Club.
As a result, on a day in late April, the Shea family attended the running of the Macleay Autumn Cup. M. M. Chance’s four-year-old Dasher was beaten into second place by five lengths, finishing behind Mr. B. Habash’s roan, Strong Medicine, ridden by the owner. Later, a delighted Mr. Habash and his fiancée Miss Mamie Kenna were photographed with the Autumn Cup Bandy had garnered. Mrs. Kitty Shea, towards the end of her term, applauded the event from a camp stool set up on the tray of the delivery dray.
Coastal steamers, though still forced to moor at New Entrance, had brought in members of the racing fraternity from other parts of the North Coast. Burrawong had also brought in punters from Sydney, as well as a small number of regular passengers, Mrs. Molly Burke amongst them. She went through a restrained reunion with her husband and told him that under pressure from the Provincial of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at Randwick, a cousin of Old Burke’s, young Ellen had at last uttered in tears the name of the father of the child she was carrying.
As Bandy Habash emerged out of the prize ring, smiling in jockey silks of green and blue, to be congratulated by Tim Shea, Mr. Burke of Pee Dee station, whom Tim had not known to be present at the race meeting, launched himself at Bandy and felled him with a furious blow. Restrained by a combination of constables and citizens, Mr. Burke would not state what his reason for this attack was. Mr. Habash for his part said he would not press charges.
Later that day, after a conversation with her sister Kitty to which Tim was not a party, Mamie Kenna broke off her engagement to Mr. Habash. To some people’s surprise, Mr. Habash—not yet departed for the Clarence River—consoled himself with the observances of the Catholic Church—first confession, then the Rosary, Benediction, and daily Mass. Habash also made a number of appeals for help to Tim Shea, but though more sympathetic than some saw as proper Tim told him that nothing could be said to the sisters.
The week before the Macleay River Bridge connecting West and Central to East was opened, the British garrison of Mafeking, besieged by the Boers for longer than Kempsey had been besieged by plague, was relieved by a British flying column. No British garrisons were hostage any more in the world. Things had been restored to their accustomed balance. A procession was held in Belgrave Street and down Smith. That was the end of the serious drum beating, and Tim Shea was pleased. It would be another year before Tim Shea would need to frown down upon reports in the Chronicle of General Kitchener’s sweeping clearance of the Boer population, of the burning of farms, of the crowding of Boer families into “camps of refuge,” or as the Spanish called them, “concentration camps.”