It was positively a courtship. The manager would have felt more disgusted if at that moment Captain and Cis had not put up another couple of rabbits, which took refuge in a nearby warren.
Returning to the present Mr Lushington grumbled, ‘Eaten out by rabbits. Dig ’em out, Prowse. That’s something for the winter months. Break Eddie’s back, I expect. But that’s the way to break ’em in.’ Again he dug his stockwhip at the Blue Mule’s smudged withers.
‘Yes, Mr Lushington,’ Prowse agreed. ‘We’ll get young Eddie on to that.’ At the same time he gripped his mare’s belly so hard with his spurs that the poor beast let out a fart and curvetted sideways.
Mr Lushington grinned.
‘Did you know my mother?’ Eddie asked in the absence of other inspiration.
‘Your mother? No.’
‘I thought you might have met her.’
‘No,’ he said very firmly. ‘Never.’
They rode a little.
‘My wife’s met her,’ he said, ‘I think. Yes, I’m pretty sure Marcia knows Eadie Twyborn.’ They rode some more. ‘There’s a lot of a woman’s life a man doesn’t know about. I mean,’ he hastened to add, ‘all those lunches — and afternoon teas — and the letters they write one another — and the telephone conversations. We wouldn’t want to know, would we?’
Eddie agreed because it was expected of him. Actually he would have liked to know some more about Marcia Lushington of the beige eyelids and fringe of monkey fur. But realised he must keep her separate from Greg. Perhaps later on he would crossquestion the manager.
Prowse was looking grimmer and grimmer. ‘Talking of lunches, Mr Lushington — what about a bite of tucker ourselves?’ he mentioned, and laughed.
The boss did not reject the suggestion, nor did he satisfy the man he employed by accepting it outright.
They had descended from the slopes and were riding amongst the white tussock and briar patches which fringed the river before the emerald lucerne stands took over farther down.
On reaching an overhang of sheltering rock Mr Lushington asked, ‘This suit you, Don?’
It was the first time Eddie had heard the boss call the manager by his first name. He wondered when you did and when you didn’t; perhaps it was allowed when you knocked off for lunch.
‘Fine, Mr Lushington. A pretty decent windbreak.’ Though he did not attempt to return the familiarity, Prowse had jumped down, and was rubbing his hands together with boyish and at the same time passionate informality.
Sliding off the willingly passive Blue Mule, it was Eddie Twyborn who felt old, stiff, and formal.
Mr Lushington dismounted with considerable professional dignity. On his feet he looked more than ever pear-shaped, even toadlike, without losing his aura of authority and wealth.
The stockmen flung into automatic action and in the Twentieth Century did the sort of thing that has always been expected of serfs: snapping twigs, kindling fire, filling quart-pots, setting these to boil. The democratic spirit of Australia prevailed only after congealed chops were produced from saddle-pouches and the quarts had boiled: men and boss sank their teeth into fatty chops, trying to outdo one another in a display of ugliness and appetite.
Mrs Tyrrell had supplied Eddie with chops, but he could not have joined in the tea ceremony if Greg Lushington had not eased his own blackened quart in the direction of his friend’s son.
Blinded by smoke and steam, scalded by the tea in which he sank his mouth, Eddie lowered his eyelids to convey his appreciation of a ritual.
Judging by his smile and the expression refracted by the spectacles, Mr Lushington was delighted, but Don Prowse swallowed what could have been a lump of gristle. He began to cough, and frown his orange frown.
‘Get you a quart, Ed — first trip to Woolambi.’
Towards the end of the meal he offered Eddie a sip from his. The tea was by then cooler, if not less bitter. He was able to take several gulps. The manager sat nursing his knees, looking along the river as though to dissociate himself from his own gesture.
‘Moth! Bloody moth!’ Denny the son of Jim began shouting, golloping, beating ineffectually with a torn-off gum-switch at a creature which had fluttered out from the lee of their rock shelter. ‘Make good bait if you can catch the bitches.’
‘Set down, Denny,’ his father advised.
Denny obeyed, though Captain and Cis continued snapping awhile at the air which had contained the departed moth.
Mr Lushington said, ‘That’s one of the bogong moths. There’s a season of the year when they gather in the mountains — a regular moth corroboree. The blacks used to go up, and feast on them, and grow fat.’
Their lips and cheeks glistening, the whites looked replete and drowsy, if not with moths, with mutton chops. Only Eddie Twyborn felt nauseated. To stave off his queasiness he almost broke silence disgracefully by returning to the subject of Marcia, but swallowed the impulse along with his sensation of nausea.
The party staggered up. They packed their tackle. Except for tooth-picking, the work day seemed over. Well, the evenings set in early at ‘Bogong’. The inky shadows were already gathering along the river flat and in the mountain clefts.
The party rode off in the direction of evening fires.
Rounding the shoulder of a hill where briars had taken over, Mr Lushington said, ‘Root out the briars, Prowse. That’s somethun else for the winter months. Get this boy to help yer. That’s what ’e’s here for. Experience.’
The boss left them the other side of the loose-jointed bridge, followed by his terrier pack.
‘See you, Eddie,’ he called back; then with a somewhat diffident daring, ‘You’ll have to come up and meet my wife — who knows your mum.’
Eddie felt too tired as they rode towards their own quarters, but must draw Prowse on Marcia, unless Peggy Tyrrell made that unnecessary.
‘How’re you doin’, Ed?’ Their knees bumped; it might have been deliberately and with a forced heartiness on the manager’s part. ‘You look fucked out!’ He laughed, but not unkindly, or it may have been cajoled out of him by his mare’s fondling the bit with her tongue in anticipation of a feed of oats.
Any evening Eddie Twyborn looked and felt fucked out. It was what he was there for, wasn’t it? He did, however, wonder, picking at the raw blisters on his hands. He derived a morbid pleasure from letting the water out of the blisters, farting after boiled cabbage, or mashed swede with the lumps still in it, listening to Prowse tell how Kath walked out taking Kim with her.
‘Kim’s the kid, is she? Why did you call her Kim, Don?’
‘Why not? It’s a name, isn’t it?’
There was nothing to reply to that.
‘Any’ow,’ Prowse said, ‘I think it was Kath’s choice.’ He seemed satisfied that Eddie had given him the opportunity to blame his wife for something else.
‘What about Marcia? What’s she like?’
‘Another woman.’ He poured himself another whiskey; he had grown surly.
Mrs Tyrrell was more forthcoming, if only slightly so, on an evening when Prowse said he had to go up to the homestead to a conference with Lushington and the accountant who was down from Sydney.
‘Marcia?’ Mrs Tyrrell hid a yawn behind her hand. ‘She was from Tilba way. That makes ’er foreign to some, but I was allus broadminded where foreigners is concerned. Anyways, she did well for ’erself catching Lushington. Cupboards full of lovely gowns. An’ furs put away in calico bags. Mrs Edmonds, ’oo ’elps, showed me the furs when she ’ad ’em out to air. Couldn’t let Marce go to the ball smellun of mothballs.’
‘Are we ever going to set eyes on Marce?’