Chapter VIII I. Home for Christmas
It was a red hot Christmas that year—’ot, ’ot, ’ot, all day long. Good Lord, how hot it was!—till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings in its trail. After six o’clock you would sense the breeze coming from the sea. Whispering, sighing, hesitating. Then puff! there it was. Delicious, sweet, it seemed to save one’s life.
It had been splendid out back, but it was nice to get home again and sit down to regular meals, have clean clothes and sheets to one’s bed. To have your ironing and cooking done for you, and sit down to dinner at a big table with fresh, hailstorm-patterned tablecloth on it. There was a sense almost of glory in a big, white, glossy, hailstorm table-cloth. It lifted you up.
Mr. Ellis had taken Gran away for the time, so the place seemed freer, noisier. There was nothing to keep quiet for. It was holiday—pinkie, the natives called it; the fierce midsummer Christmas. Everybody was allowed to “spell” a great deal.
Tom and Jack were roasted like Red Indians, rather uncouth, and more manly. At first they seemed rather bumptious, thinking themselves very much men. Jack could now ride his slippery saddle in fine style, and handle a rope or an axe, and shoot straight. He knew jarrah, karri, eucalyptus, sandal, wattle, peppermint, banksia, she-oaks, pines, paper-back and gum trees; he had learned to tan a kangaroo hide, pegging it on to a tree; he had looked far into the wilderness, and seen the beyond, and been seized with a desire to explore it; he had made excursions over “likely places,” with hammer and pick, looking for gold. He had hunted and brought home meat, had trapped and destroyed many native cats and dingoes. He had lain awake at night and listened to the more-porks, and in the early morning had heard with delight the warbling of the timeline and thickhead thrushes that abounded round the camp, mingled with the noises of magpies, tits, and wrens. He had watched the manoeuvres of willy-wagtails, and of a brilliant variety of birds: weavers, finches, parrots, honeyeaters, and pigeons. But the banded wrens and blue-birds were his favourites in the bush world.
Well, on such a hero as this, the young home-hussies Monica and Grace had better not look too lightly. He was so grand they could hardly reach him with a long pole.
“An’ how many emus did y’ see?” asked Og. For lately at Wandoo they had had a plague of emus, which got into the paddocks and ate down the sheeps’ food-stuffs, and then got out again by running at the fences and bashing a way through.
Jack had never seen one.
“Never seen an emu!”—Even little Ellie shrilled in derisive amazement. “Monica, he’s never seen an emu!”
Already they had snipped the tip off the high feather he had in his cap.
But he was still a hero, and Lennie followed him round like a satellite, while the girls were obviously thrilled at having Tom and him back again. They would giggle and whisper behind Bow’s back, and wherever he was, they were always sauntering out to stand not far off from him. So that, of course, their thrill entered also into Jack’s veins, he felt a cocky young lord, a young life-master. This suited him very well.
But there was no love-making, of course. They all laughed and joked together over the milking and pail-carrying and feeding and butter-making and cheese-making and everything, and life was a happy delirium.
They had waited for Tom to come home, to rob the bees. Tom hated the bees and they hated him, but he was staunch. Veils, bonnets, gloves, gaiters were produced, and off they all set, in great joy at their own appearance, with gong, fire, and endless laughter. Tom was to direct from a distance: he stood afar, “Smoking them off.” Grace and Monica worked merrily among the hives, manipulating the boxes which held the comb, lifting them on to the milk pans to save the honey, and handing the pans to the boys to carry in.
“Oooh!” yelled Tom suddenly, “Oooh!”
A cloud of angry bees was round his head. Down went his fire-protector—a tin full of smouldering chips—down went flappers and bellows as with a shriek he beat the air. The more he beat the darker the venomous cloud. Crippled with terror, he ran on shaking legs. The girls and youngsters were paralysed with joy. They swarmed after him shrieking with laughter. His head was completely hidden by bees, but his arms like windmills waved wildly to and fro. He dashed into the cubby, but the bees went with him. He appeared at the window for a moment, showing a demented face, then he jumped out, and the bees with him. Leaping the drain gap and yelling in terror, he made for the house. The bees swung with him and the children after. Jack and the girls stood speechless, looking at one another. Monica had on man’s trousers with an old uniform buttoned close to her neck, workmen’s socks over her shoes and trouser-ends, and a Chinaman’s hat with a veil over it, netted round her head like a meat-safe. Jack noticed that she was funny. Suddenly, somehow, she looked mysterious to him, and not just the ordinary image of a girl. Suddenly a new cavern seemed to open before his eyes: the mysterious, fascinating cavern of the female unknown. He was not definitely conscious of this. But seeing Monica there in the long white flannel trousers and the Chinaman’s-hat meat-safe over her face, something else awoke in him, a new awareness of a new wonder. He had but lately stood on the inward ranges and looked inland into the blue, vast mystery of the Australian interior. And now with another opposite vision he saw an opposite mystery opposing him: the mystery of the female, the young female there in her grotesque garb.
A new awareness of Monica began to trouble him.
“Oooh! Oooh! Ma! Ma! Ma!” Out rushed Tom straight from the kitchen door, the bees still with him. Straight he dashed to the garden, and to the well in the middle. He loosed the windlass and stood on the coping screaming while the bucket clanged and clashed to the bottom. Then Tom seized the rope, and turning his legs round it, slid silently into the hidden, cool dark depths.
The children shrieked with bliss, Jack and the girls rocked with helpless laughter, convulsed by this last exit.
The bees were puzzled. They poised buzzbee fashion above the well-head, explored the mouth of the shaft, and rose again and hovered. Then they began to straggle away. They melted into the hot air.
And now the girls and Jack drew up from the well a raging and soaking Tom. Drew him up uncertainly, wobblingly, a terrible weight on the straining, creaking windlass. Ma and Ellie took him in hand and daubed him a sublime blue: like an ancient Briton, Grace said. Then they gave him bread and jam and a cup of tea.
Then occurred another honey-bee tragedy. Ellie, who had done nothing at all to the bees, suddenly shrieked loudly and ran pelting round, screaming: “I’ve got a bee in my head! I’ve got a bee in my head!” Monica caught and held her, while Jack took the bee, a big drone, out of the silky meshes of her honey hair. And as he lifted his eyes he met the yellow eyes of Monica. And the two exchanged a moment’s look of intimacy and communication and secret shame, so that they both went away avoiding one another.