The Middle of Nowhere Read online

  “You are my very best friend, Fred,” said Comity.

  “You got more?” said Fred.

  “Plenty.” Comity laughed, and felt the warm breath on her neck of Ivanhoe her imaginary snow-white pony.

  Dear Cousins,

  How are you? Are you well? We send three cheers for your good news. We have a fine orkestra now ourselfs, what with Loud Lulu on the bagpipes and Amos playing his bugel and Cage the violin. Father plays glass harmonica on the crystal wine glasses. Naturally we do not use them for drinking wine, because we do not drink wine and never have.

  Emus are roosting on the roof today. In Denmark this brings luck and Papa says we need a lot of luck so we need a lot of emus.

  Mama is v bizzy at present helping

  Comity stopped short in the nick of time. She had been going to write that her mother was helping out in the Morse room, but that was a lie which could have got Herbert Pinny dismissed from his job. Comity knew full well that Unauthorized Persons using the machine room was forbidden. What was more, the noxious Blighs knew it too: Mr. Bligh was Superintendent of Telegraphy.

  Mama is v bizzy at present helping to sheer the sheep. She is a wonder with a pare of sheers.

  Aunt Berenice was never going to offer Comity a home, because Aunt Berenice would never, never, never, ever know that her sister was dead. Comity vowed to make sure of that.

  Forbidden to help in the machine room, bereft of lessons, Comity spent more and more time with Fred. When Amos, Hart and Cage left for a northerly tour of inspection, Smith the smith took to “resting his back” in the afternoons. This involved lying on the bench in the forge and doing deep breathing and inspecting the inside of his eyelids until sunset. He knew full well that the Stationmaster would not check up on him. The Stationmaster never stepped outside the house.

  Meanwhile, Comity and Fred explored the surrounding countryside together, venturing farther and farther from the station. Fred knew every inch of the landscape. Comity firmly believed that he knew every inch of Australia.

  He took Comity to see the cat tree, where dead feral cats and dingoes had been strung up to frighten off live ones. (It gave her nightmares for a week.) He pointed out the widow-maker trees that would drop their branches on anyone stupid enough to sleep in their shade. He took her to places that were beautiful and mysterious and strange, where the bones of rock poked through the earth’s downy skin or the sinking sun made eagles out of the evening cloud. He pointed out where native corroborees had lasted all night, and what stories had been told there, and what dancing and magic done.

  He knew of rocks that had been Old People during the Dreamtime. Growing weary, they had simply hunkered down and turned to stone. The spirits of men and women came out of such rocks – “Never when you do looking, but when you do not looking, they come forth.” And Comity began to see the Outback as Fred saw it, full of wonder and beauty and stories.

  Fred, too, was learning. His English was improving. In their dealings with the station, most of the Aboriginals spoke very little. But Fred had not only found a friend in Comity, he had found an audience for his cleverness. If he could, Fred would have kept Comity in his dillybag along with the bandicoot and the six stones (and the reel of fuse wire he had indeed stolen from Jesus’ gunyah).

  So he was even ready to show her his greatest secret of all – the carcass of a railway carriage lying on its side in a hollow near Deep Brook. It had the desired effect.

  “Oh Fred! However did it get here?”

  “It crash,” he said. “There was big crash-bang nearby Oodna. A camel, maybe. Ask not why the wild camel joys to walk on rail track. They do it.”

  Some passing ghans had helped to free the dead and injured, then, by way of a reward, they had taken the only carriage still upright after the crash. For a time, it had rolled along pretty well behind four camels harnessed to it by ropes. But in reaching Miser’s Gorge, the ghans had not known how to apply the brakes, and the carriage had rolled down the slope, crushing two of the camels before rolling onto its side. It lay there now, abandoned. The remains of the dead camels were still in evidence, inside and outside the carriage, bones stripped bare by dingoes, crows and insects and bleached by the blazing sun.

  Though he worked at Kinkindele Station and slept nearby with the other stationhands, Fred thought of the railway carriage as his true gunyah. Until today, he had shown it to no one. He climbed up onto it now, opened one of the doors, and they both lowered themselves into the sweltering heat of a first class railcar.

  Everything was askew, though Fred had cleared away any broken glass. A dented kettle rested on the side of the stove instead of the top. But with no water to be had, that was as good a place as any, Comity supposed.

  “I make a brew-up?” asked Fred, and they made pretend tea and drank it.

  There was even a suitcase and umbrella in the luggage rack, their owner dead or otherwise past caring about his property. Fred opened the suitcase now and put on a stiff collar, a pair of reading glasses and a stethoscope. He sucked on an unlit, empty pipe. Even without tobacco, it made the exact same noise as when Cage the wireman did it. Comity would have laughed, but something told her not to. Fred was investing himself with more than clothing when he put on collar and spectacles: the expression on his face changed; the set of his body altered.

  “Will the ghans come back for it ever?” she asked.

  Fred made a snarling noise in the back of his throat, as if to say he could defend his home if he had to.

  “A person could live here,” Comity said.

  “A while,” said Fred.

  Fred’s spur-of-the-moment decision to show Comity the railcar made them late in getting back to the station. Later than late.

  Smith was up and raging. Cage, Hart and Amos had arrived home from their tour of inspection and two of their horses were in need of shoeing. Unable to find Fred to pump the forge bellows, Smith was instantly furious. When boy and girl appeared from between the blue gum trees, he snatched up a bridle by its reins and swung it round his head, swearing to slash Fred into jerky.

  Alongside her, Comity could feel Fred tremble. Without collar and pipe or spectacles, he was a skinny little boy again, at the mercy of anyone on the station.

  Comity could see her father standing on the verandah of Telegraph House, talking to the wiremen. She noticed how his suit hung loose on him these days, like a blanket over a tangle of barbed wire. There was a handkerchief clamped tight in one fist, and now and then he plucked on it with his teeth. He was despatching Cage and Amos and Hart to look for his daughter. The wiremen, home after twenty days in the saddle and sleeping on the ground, were intent on getting to the bathtub Loud Lulu was filling for them with pans of water.

  When the Stationmaster saw his daughter emerge from the twilight, his face filled up with anger. It shrank her insides to the same size as the handkerchief. “Where have you been, girl?”

  “I went following a honeybird, Papa. Looking for honey. I got lost. Luckily Fred noticed I was gone missing. He came looking.” Did she mean to stress the words as she did? Surely not. And when had she become so adept at lying?

  Loud Lulu began banging on the bathtub with the saucepan. The weary horses jostled each other. Somewhere, an owl complained of loneliness – hoo-boo, hoo-boo. Comity went and kissed her father and apologized if she had caused him any worry. The wiremen went to get their bath. The night settled like a campfire and a shower of sparky stars appeared. Sparks belched from the forge too, as Fred began pumping up the bellows.

  “Leave it, fool. ’S’too late now,” growled Smith, swinging the bridle half-heartedly at Fred. Thanks to Comity’s fib, he had no excuse to thrash the boy. And anyway, people were looking. It would keep for another time.

  “You should tell that girl,” said Smith. “Tell her to keep away from that blackfellah. His kind cannot be trusted.”

  Herbert Pinny tried hard to avoid conversations like this. He and Mary had had strong opinions on the Equality of Ma
n. All men are precious in the eyes of God, and deserving of respect. It had been easy to say that in civilized Adelaide. It proved much harder in Kinkindele. “Not to be trusted” was as far as thinking had got there. No “comity” existed between black, white and ghan.

  But Mary had insisted: while she lived in Telegraph House, all men and women would be treated as equals at Kinkindele.

  Comity-of-nations had brought Mary and Herbert together. Both believed fervently that one day the nations of the world would come to respect and honour each other’s laws and beliefs. As soon as that happened, war would shrivel and die. Peace would reign over all. It was why they named their daughter as they had. Comity had grown up firmly believing she would never go to heaven if she did not love foreigners.

  She had no trouble at all liking Fred. She knew she ought to love and respect the ghans too. But they were just too frightening, what with their bandaged heads and dust-red eyes and foreign language; their no-smiles and their looking away. When gossip circulated of a white widow woman marrying a ghan cameleer and going to live in a ghantown, Mary Pinny had clapped her hands with joy, exclaiming, “Ah, there is comity!” And for one dreadful moment Comity had thought her parents meant to marry her off to a ghan. That was when she realized she probably ought to be called something different.

  Little did Comity know it, but Herbert Pinny had been feeling much the same, ever since hearing of an attack on a telegraph station farther north. A spear in his back, his life blood spreading in a pool across some machine-room floor, Mr. Stapleton had tapped out a description of his Aboriginal attackers, before slumping insensible over his desk. Herbert had never told his wife about it, for fear of frightening her. But it had rather dented his faith in the comity of nations. There is nothing so denting to a man’s ideals as the fear of a spear in the back.

  “Camels in the yard!”

  The shout made her flinch. But Comity no longer looked for her father to come out of his office to meet the cameleers. Five camel trains had called since the piano, and Comity had had to greet each one with lemonade and courtesy. She no longer made up excuses for her father’s absence. She tried to look as if it was her job to take receipt of deliveries. She had come to recognize the cargoes, crated or wrapped in sacking: bottles of battery acid, parts for the generator, canned fish, porcelain wire-holders. (Guiltily she now knew why so many replacement wire-holders were needed: Fred had said what excellent spearheads they made when snapped smartly in half. She had told him off roundly – but watched open-mouthed with admiration as he shinnied up a telegraph pole and stole one, to make her a spear of her own.)

  Today she could recognize among the cameleers the handsome ghan boy who had led the piano camel. He did not look away as all the others did, and even seemed ready to smile at her. But who was the white man in the ankle-length cotton coat and straw-boater hat?

  Glancing at herself in the speckled mirror, Comity was taken aback to see how wild she was looking. Her nose and cheekbones were sunburned, and when she ran a brush through her hair, sand scattered across the floor, as well as a sprig of desert pea flowers Fred had stuck there the day before. When she opened the door, its frame was filled by the man in the duster-coat. He turned to the ghans and raised a hand. “Kha safer walare!” he called.

  Then he turned back and ran his eyes over her like a flat iron over a shirt. His eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead. His mouth formed a tiny circle of mock astonishment, and he raised his hat with a gloved hand. “Quartz Hogg reporting for duty, ma’am,” he said.

  If Leonard had been less honest, it might never have happened. Months after resigning as deputy telegrapher at Kinkindele, he was astonished to discover that he was still receiving his salary. He assumed it was a mistake. He was not to know, of course, that Stationmaster Pinny had burned the letter of resignation or that Head Office thought he was still working there.

  Many a young man would have been tempted to keep the money. Not Leonard. He wrote to the Company returning their money in full and suggesting his letter of resignation must have been lost.

  That was when the Company realized that Herbert Pinny had been struggling on single-handedly for six months. They hastily despatched a replacement.

  So here was Quartz Hogg, deputy telegrapher, assigned for two years to share Henry Pinny’s workload at Telegraph House.

  “Papa, the replacement has—” was all Comity had time to whisper before Quartz Hogg burst into the machine room behind her and looked around him at his new workplace.

  “Quartz O’Malley Hogg!” he declared, running his iron-grey eyes over Herbert’s creased suit. “Your servant, sir. Your right-hand man. Your genie in a bottle. A winged Mercury to your Jove. Succour to your griefs and balm to your woes… A brandy would not come amiss.”

  Australian telegraphers are a particular breed of man. They are particularly particular about their appearance. Quartz Hogg carried a crystal-topped cane and wore spats, gloves and mutton-chop whiskers. His waistcoat was yellow tartan and his trousers and jacket green twill. He reeked of cologne. His luggage included a lady’s riding crop, ten shirts, a corset, evening suit, cashbox, sugar, a pistol, an army rifle, cravats, and (apparently) two giant bedsprings. All this luggage lay ranged along the verandah now, like a well-stocked jumble sale. Recognizing the shape of a piano, Mr. Hogg threw back the sheet, pulled up a chair and began to play, pumping the loud pedal like the treadle of a sewing machine.

  Herbert Pinny, trembling with nerves or outrage, breathed, “Leave that!” but Quartz Hogg was singing too loudly to hear.

  The piano was hopelessly out of tune, the melody barely recognizable, but Hogg sang as though it were pitch-perfect. Months of silence shattered like grey glass. It was awful and shocking…and very slightly marvellous as well.

  Astonished faces looked in at the window, and Hogg beckoned Amos and Hart and Cage and Smith to come on in. The sandy dust that had taken over the house was stirred up by stamping feet and the vibrations of the piano. It glittered in the low afternoon sun. Even the camel train watering their beasts at the trough looked back at the house in surprise.

  Hogg leaped from song to song, sometimes abandoning one in the middle when a better one came to mind. The colour rising in his cheeks, he called for requests.

  A smile twitched at Comity’s mouth. She wondered if she dared ask for “Hang on the Bell, Nelly”, which her mother had loved to sing.

  “I have a request,” said Herbert Pinny, his face ashen, his nose bleeding a little from pent-up emotion.

  “What will it be, Mr. Pinny, sir?” asked the beaming Mr. Hogg, meaty hands poised over the keyboard.

  “That you desist immediately.”

  Hogg lifted his foot. The damper silenced the humming piano wires. A damper fell on the party, too. Amos gathered up the dust sheet. Cage muttered something to Hart, and they picked up their hats off the dining table. Comity remembered that she must cook dinner for three and prepare a room for the new arrival, and that she did not know how.

  Only Quartz Hogg was undismayed. He closed the piano lid with exaggerated care and squared up the candleholders. He appraised every face in the room with a flick of those grey, metallic eyes, then let them rest for the longest time on the Stationmaster. Herbert twitched his face aside. The wiremen filed out of the door.

  “Right!” said Quartz springing to his feet. “When do we dine? Should I change for dinner?”

  Hogg played cards with the wiremen, and they told him how glad they were of a new face; how these days Herbert Pinny never so much as came out of the house to be sociable, let alone invite them over.

  “He’s a shy man. I noticed as much,” said Mr. Hogg.

  He played dominoes with the land manager, who complained that no drink was allowed on the station, not so much as a bottle of sherry at Christmas time.

  “He’s a dry man. I noticed as much,” said Mr.Hogg.

  Exploring the forge, Hogg declared a passion for hunting. “When I was in the cavalry, they gave me a fine
, big hunter. I miss her twixt my thighs. A man may make do with an indifferent wife, but he needs a good horse to be happy!” And Smith laughed, for Hogg seemed an unlikely huntsman in his tight trousers, the yolk-yellow waistcoat exaggerating his egg-shaped body.

  He discussed ailments and remedies with the blacksmith, but the smith was not so easily won over.

  “You talked to the ghans. In their own lingo.” Smith made it sound like an accusation.

  “Afghan War,” said Hogg. “I was in Kabul.” And instantly he soared in the smith’s estimation, for he too had served with an army, and ex-soldiers are all brothers under the skin. “Those camel-fellahs say they fought on the side of the British. Mind you, what else would they say? That they fought against us?”

  “Right. Right,” said Smith. “Pinny lets that daughter of his go about with the yard boy. Blackfellah,” said Smith.

  “That one you mean?” said Hogg, and refocused his eyes on the distant figure of Fred, who was hoeing the vegetable patch.

  Each man on the station was glad of Quartz Hogg’s arrival, finding him a fellow after their own hearts. They might pity Mr. Pinny and respect his skill at Morse; still they found him a cold fish. It is hard to like a man who insists on keeping himself to himself.

  “He is teaching me to play a tune on the piano!” Comity told Fred.

  Fred made no reply. He had become oddly taciturn recently and Comity wondered if he was cross with her for spending time with the new telegrapher. Or perhaps he was worried that Mr. Hogg would keep a closer eye on the porcelain insulators.

  She was ashamed – tried not to be, but was ashamed at the poor welcome her father had given Quartz Hogg. She could not fail to notice the differences between them. Once upon a time, her father had dressed as nattily as Mr. Hogg – not quite so colourful in the waistcoat department, but abiding by the dress code of his profession. Even in the Outback, even under a slamming noonday sun, telegraphers kept up appearances. Now, though, Herbert Pinny’s waistcoat was food-stained. His spats were pinked with dust. The toecaps of his shoes were scuffed. Even his hair hung lifeless and lank and ragged after Comity’s efforts to cut it. His walking cane had been poked through the handles of the kitchen dresser to stop the doors swinging open, whereas Mr. Hogg’s crystal-topped cane caught the sunlight, so that wherever he went, he was escorted by rainbows.