Shallows Read online

  ‘Now where is that?’ Pell says, suddenly compelled to find it. ‘Such a long time ago.’ He gets up with a groan and goes into his office and digs around in his filing cabinets until he draws out a crumpled sheet with a triumphant chortle. ‘I did keep it. Well, well. Queenie Coupar, weren’t you a girl!’

  THE BEGGER

  The begger stole my eggs

  He cut off his babies arms and legs

  The people took pitty

  And gave him money, and also some honey,

  all in a small paper bag.

  Some of the beggers slept out in the cold

  Some of the beggers were young or old

  Babies with arms and babies with none

  This was not thrilling I can tell you now.

  Believe me!

  Soon the beggers left the town,

  without a sound!

  Then in the morning we heard not a

  word and new that the beggers had

  gone, and the town was free to rome.

  ‘Queenie C, 10 yrs old,’ he had written.

  ‘Whoever humbles himself like this child . . . why couldn’t we be born old and grow young?’

  Then Pell takes his big body to work. Whorls of dust dance as he empties his storeroom of its boxes and cartons, carrying them outside to the rented truck parked at the side of the house. After three-quarters of an hour, his whole body trembling with fatigue, he finally loads up the last of it and ties the flaps of the canvas canopy. The piano still chugs in the church hall as Pell starts the diesel engine and manoeuvres inexpertly out onto the road. Within a few minutes he accustoms himself to the clutch and the gears and the vehicle’s bulk; it has been a long time since he drove pigs to market as a farmer’s son.

  Hassa Staats walks without noticing the sound of rain coming up from the south, conscious only of a constriction he cannot see, some tautness in his chest. When he felt like this as a young man he would go for long runs to burn the tightness out. These days a good run would kill him, so he walks with a heavy, deliberate gait. Now Staats’s chest pain is like nothing from his youth.

  He finds himself, after several minutes’ walking, turning, walking, in Port Park above the miry tennis courts. The park is in darkness, the gardens are invisible windbreaks, he smells roses and that dandelion smell of boyhood, his shoes scuff wet grass. Hassa Staats knows this park well in the dark; he stands against the ancient cannon, pulls a Coke can from its snout and a handful of maple leaves. He tosses the can – poink-poink – across the grass and rubs his knuckles in the wet musty muzzle-hole. A car passes up on the road, sheeting light across the gardens and lawns. A drinking fountain mutters, leaking. Staats walks down to the bottom of the gardens with a view of the glittering harbour that is barely used, and sits on the big stormwater pipe where once a freshwater spring gouted. His buttocks spread on the cold concrete, Hassa Staats is thinking of that night twenty-five years ago when, in the dank, circular dark of this pipe, he and Mara (then a milkman’s pretty daughter) grovelled together long and effectively enough to cause the eventual birth of their son Rick. Before Rick was born they were hastily but elegantly married in the Dutch Reformed Hall. Staats remembers the beating his father gave him when he confessed his night in the pipe. Okke Staats might also have beaten Mara Glockspoorn had she not been five unmistakeable months pregnant. Can’t even recall if it was a good go, he thinks. Can’t remember a damn thing about it, except the whipping half a year later.

  What a day, he thinks, what a day for this town. People coming from everywhere, from outside, to tell this town how to live, to shut down our whaling station, then having the gall to come into my hotel and drink my beer and play my pool, and the granddaughter of Daniel Coupar among them. People don’t even know how to treat their enemies these days. Bad things, this town’s coming to. Oh, the whalers, they’re not worried, nothing frightens them: don’t know if they aren’t too dumb to worry. So damned confident, as if nothing, not even God Almighty, could take away the whaling. They’re the only ones not afraid of the dole office. This town, this town! I saw them today in the barbershops, all the old timers talkin’ about what they’re gonna do to these bloody foreigners when they catch up with ’em. We’re gonna need more’n old men to get rid of this lot. The people of this town have forgotten how to be strong.

  ‘Oh, God, don’t let them take the whalers away,’ he says. He is frightened at the prospect of there being no whalers in his pub five nights a week. It isn’t the money – he’d give them beer on the house, pour it down their throats to keep them there; but if they were no longer allowed to work as he had always known them to, then they would become has-beens like Ernie Easton, human, sad, silly, soft, and he could have no respect for them as an institution, and Angelus would die for him.

  Hassa Staats makes his way out of the blackness of the park and down a rain-slicked path; he pulls his Vinyl collar up and walks, shaking the drops of water from his bulbous nose.

  An hour later when the rain has thickened and he is still walking up and down, he sees Queenie Cookson moving down the steep terrace towards the harbour; he knows it is her, he knows that hair. He watches her go hurriedly down in the rain. He cannot think of a foul enough name to call out to her and, in any case, his heart is not in it.

  Des Pustling, eating at the Colonial with his private secretary Marion Lowell, finds the sound of the rain soothing. It has been a long day for him and he has worked hard. Thus far, it has been a pleasant evening, except for the mishap of the tooth dropping into his wine glass, about which he is sure his secretary is ignorant. He is wrong.

  Pustling is grateful that he doesn’t have an ulcer; he prides himself on it. He is the only man of commerce in the town without one, or so he thinks; he considers Hassa Staats, for instance, as too stupid to be able to sustain an ulcer. He is wrong again. Pustling is a poor judge of character and sometimes he knows it, though it never bothers him: he knows his talents.

  Ignoring the yellowish lozenge in the bottom of his glass, Pustling sips his twenty-dollar-a-bottle Chablis with satisfaction and looks across at Marion Lowell, a big-boned woman in her thirties who has been in his complete employ for a number of years.

  ‘Enjoying your jewfish?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about my father?’ he asks, sucking the new tender spot in his gum.

  ‘Yes,’ Marion Lowell says, pausing with a spoonful of tartare sauce.

  ‘He was a man who knew the pleasure of competition. Competition’s so important. When he came to this town in 1929 he had some pretty stiff competition from farmers. It was a boom time for him – a Depression for everyone else – and the task was to buy up every skerrick of land available. Farmers were crying out for buyers, land was dirt cheap, if you’ll forgive the expression. But the excitement for him was the opposition from a small group of farmers led by a young fella, now quite an old fella, called Coupar, who didn’t even own a farm at the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marion Lowell says, listening to the sound of rain. Others in the restaurant speak in demure, timid tones; Pustling always speaks louder in a quiet place.

  ‘Oh, they burnt their own farms and slaughtered their own stock like on some Western movie, tried all the tricks, but my Dad bought them all out regardless. Even if he did sell them back during the war,’ he says with a wink. ‘Nowadays the challenge isn’t the same. Been sewn up for a long time and the locals have gotten used to the idea. No challenge, is what I mean. I can see why God keeps the Devil on, you know; it’s to stop him from getting bored. Imagine how bored God must get. So I play games – small scale, but fun enough. I mean you can only go up, can’t you? Enjoying the jewfish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Des Pustling pictures his dead father: a tall, thin, handsome man. Benjamin Pustling was a man of impeccable deportment and lethal elegance; he smoked a briar pipe and spoke Oxford English and walked like a man on a tightrope. He mourned for years the death of his wife Clarissa who died giving birth
to his son Desmond, and he never showed his disappointment with what she had died delivering. You can’t blame a messenger for his message, he often said. Within a decade of his arrival in Angelus, Benjamin Pustling became its landlord. In the winter of 1932 a dour, steadfast young man who had been dispossessed of his ancestral land long before, tried to retard Pustling’s progress. There was a hunger march, a food-parcel programme, a rent embargo, and young Coupar became a threat. Men and women were occupying the idle cannery and sleeping in the church and the Town Hall. Church services were held in the street, on the wharf, and the young man addressed the tattered crowd in his uncertain but plangent voice. Men and women were attracted to him; he kept them angry and they gained confidence from him and he spent his savings on them. It was when he began preaching to them from the Scriptures that the mood changed. Church authorities from the city visited. The townspeople grew suspicious and they gossiped. Pustling reopened the cannery to a few workers to keep the machinery from going to rust, paying them a few shillings more than the dole. Public meetings petered out; Daniel Coupar began to avoid company, secluding himself in the old house overlooking the harbour. To cement his victory, Pustling allowed the old Coupar property at Wirrup to be auctioned in 1939. Martin Coupar had died penniless in 1920 and the land had been sold to pay his debts. Daniel Coupar and his mother were evicted and no Coupar had owned it since. Pustling’s auction went as planned. It was no miracle that Coupar’s pitiful bids remained unopposed. Pustling himself patrolled the crowd. Coupar was given his land. Pustling was left with his town. For decades, Coupar remained a figure of history, of rumour, and no one saw him. ‘Pride,’ Benjamin Pustling said to his son, who forgot it, ‘is the best thing there is. It has made us what we are. It never fails. It’s the only thing the Catholics will give seven out of seven.’ In 1950 Benjamin Pustling died. Old men and women brought wreaths and spat on the coffin.

  ‘How’s that jewfish, fine?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marion Lowell says.

  ‘Had a chat to a few people about what happened at Paris Bay today. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble. Did you know that that Tweetie, or whatever her name is, got involved in it all? My God, we’ll have to do something about this town. I’ve lost another tooth, you know,’ he says, swilling the lozenge around in his glass.

  ‘Oh?’ Marion says, feigning surprise.

  ‘Yes. There’s one there in my glass.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Every time I lose a set I wonder if it will be my last. Frightening.’ Since his baby teeth sprouted painfully in his gums and had stayed a while and fallen out and were replaced with adult teeth, Des Pustling has had four other sets of teeth. When he was nine years old his first adult teeth began falling from his mouth like ripe fruit. Children at school were delighted and they changed his nickname from Pus-knob to Pus-gums. He was fitted with a snug set of dentures with which to smile away all insults like his father, but these were soon uprooted by a new set of teeth which seemed to germinate spontaneously and the school’s favourite tongue-twister became ‘puscusp’, often reversed to ‘spucsup’ or ‘spucpus’, then ‘puscups’ and finally ‘suckpus’. Pustling’s classmates found him endlessly entertaining and he was never without companions. In 1948 when he was studying Law he shed teeth again and left the city for good. It happened again when he was thirty, again when he was forty. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asks.

  Marion Lowell sips Chablis. ‘No,’ she says, remembering the girl with the laugh.

  ‘Good. I think we’ll have some fun with Pell in the next month or so. I don’t like men who play with my money.’

  ‘He seems to think it’s God’s money,’ she says carefully.

  ‘What would he know about God? He’s got a demented view of God, a sick man’s God. Widows, orphans, aliens, cripples. Whatever happened to the chariots of fire and the floods and famines and fights? Pell is stuck at the wet end of the Bible, I can tell you. Silly old fart. Camels and needles, ah.’

  Marion Lowell drinks her Chablis without comment.

  ‘At least I haven’t got an ulcer,’ Pustling says as a kind of benediction.

  In the bedroom of the Middle Beach house built by Benjamin Pustling in 1945, Des Pustling applies himself like a hot poultice to Marion Lowell who twitches and grits. Once, she endured this pinioning out of ambition; now it is desperation. Pustling wallows and totters and sweats and squeaks. Marion Lowell is ashamed and disgusted and pinned and invaded by a viscous but sterile torrent.

  She lies awake long after he tumbles off, asleep. He is too horrible to hate, she thinks, his toenails are too horny, his breath too foul, his girdle too pathetic: I don’t hate him. But she can not find another word for the emotion she feels as the clock strikes midnight and Pustling farts thunderously in his sleep and the rain falls.

  ‘I was eating rainbow trout, you bastard,’ she whispers. Surf breaks down on the beach.

  IX

  Cleveland Cookson read with the thunder of rain in his ears. Water hissed and the rats scuttled about, agitated. He thought: Friday night, things have changed.

  June 16, 1831 Nowles is gravely ill with fever and pain and although it should by all rights be another day until my turn to row, I must fill a place in our boat by reason of the accident. Churling, Doan, Smithson and I will take turn at rowing and lookout. Hale does not row; he is considered a disadvantage. I pray God keep me safe.

  June 17, 1831 Night, raining, bitterly cold. A ration of rum issued this afternoon, though none sent up to Churling in the lookout atop the hill. When I mentioned this oversight some man muttered that he, Churling, would need no spiritous warming when he returned. This puzzles me. My senses are dulled by weariness and a sort of revulsion for my comrades. Later I will go down to the tryworks to stoke the fires. The stench of boiling blubber permeates all, even in this rain. The blackfellows have left more roots and have hacked pieces from the putrid carcass up the beach.

  Nowles stirs and is muttering. The lamplight has a sickly hue this night. Men sit about playing crude games of chance. The dogs howl. Churling must be coming back from the end of the watch. The dogs’ howl is not unlike poor Nowles’.

  All Cleve felt was the cold rush of air; he heard nothing, but he looked up from the journal and saw Queenie inside the door in her glistening, wet-wool-smelling greatcoat. She was pale and chilled and panting. Rain lacerated the water outside. Their eyes met.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, at length, feeling surprise and resentment, yet a longing for her.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

  ‘Has my reputation in town gotten that bad?’

  Cleve squinted. ‘Eh?’

  Queenie stopped unbuttoning her coat. ‘You don’t know? My God.’

  ‘Close the door.’

  Queenie did so and moved around the desk and read over his shoulder, ‘The lamplight has a sickly hue this night . . . know how the old bugger feels.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘I get that impression. Go on.’

  ‘I was involved in a demonstration today at Paris Bay. I got caught up in it, they were my bus tour —’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cachalot & Company.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen, Cleve, I’m trying to tell you,’ she said, shaking water from her coat. She looked sodden and helpless and hard to him. ‘I got caught up and the Advocate boys were there and it got a bit unpleasant and Barney Wilkins just left us all there and – and anyway I got the bullet from the Bureau and I s’pose I’m sort of glad. I feel I’ve done something useful for the first time in my life.’

  ‘Well stuff me,’ Cleve said quietly, rubbing the bristles of his chin. ‘And it takes you until bloody midnight to come and tell me. Who are they? What the hell business have they got coming into this town? What are you doing?’

  ‘We’re planning —’

  ‘We? We?’

  ‘— s
omething bigger, much bigger —’

  ‘Queenie, for Godsake!’

  She reached a hand out to his mottled cheek but withdrew it, afraid of the look on his face. Rain hammered the tin shed. ‘No, for the whales’ sake, Cleve.’

  ‘Oh, shit, I don’t believe it. This Mickey Mouse show’s got you talking like a sentimental twit. You’re trying to close down the whaling station right now when there’s never been as many people out of work since the Depression, when there’s a drought out east and cockies are just walking off their farms. The canning factory – for Godsake – is already working off a skeleton staff and you wanna close the whalers down?’

  ‘It’s not so many jobs,’ Queenie said.

  ‘It’s a lot of jobs to those blokes with family to feed.’

  ‘Cleve, you don’t give a stuff about whalers’ families; all you’re worried about —’

  ‘Listen here, if you want to change things you write to your MP.’

  ‘And do you know what MP stands for in Angelus? Mate-of-Pustling. There’s no time to change everything from the top down. The whales are dying out, being exterminated and you know it’s a fact.’

  ‘Oh, facts,’ Cleve sighed. ‘You’re not into facts, you’re all into emotions.’

  ‘Us all. Us all. You’re never met us all. Oh, God!’

  ‘The town’s gonna go wild,’ Cleve said, shaking his head.

  ‘Oh, the bloody town – who knows? It’s just as likely to let it all happen without lifting a finger. Passion and inertia go well together in this town. Anyway, bugger the town, it’s buggered us.’