Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

him slantwise, assuming an expression almost baleful that reminded Oscar of Ballest’s reference to a dingo.

      Then a stream of white lightning poured from the heavens. The dead air stirred. Nawnim started, looked at Muttonhead. Thunder crashed, and monster echoes pealed through valleys and caverns of the mountainous clouds. Nawnim thrust his head into Muttonhead’s belly. Again the white lightning poured; the thunder crashed; a blast of cool wind struck the trees and whisked a few leaves on to the veranda. Then rain came rushing across the river—humming drumming rain—and up the hill and over the house—hissing roaring rain.

      “Round the back,” yelled Oscar, pointing. Muttonhead took Nawnim’s hand and ran.

      Oscar and Marigold went into the house and through and out to the back veranda, from which through the teeming rain they saw Muttonhead and Nawnim crouched under the eaves by the wall of the detached kitchen. In spite of what Ballest had said about Muttonhead, he was evidently too well-aware of his humbleness to enter a whiteman’s shelter uninvited. Oscar had meant that they should go to the back veranda. Seeing that they were fairly well sheltered where they were, he let them stay.

      Oscar bent to Marigold when he heard her reedy voice.

      “Is dat a lil boy Daddy?” she cried in his ear.

      He nodded and smiled weakly; and, because the wind had changed and was blowing the rain in on them, he led her inside to the dining-room, where he sat and held her between his knees.

      “Dat not a lil niggah boy, Daddy?” she asked.

      “No.”

      “What kind lil boy is he den Daddy?”

      “Little half-caste.”

      “Like Conny Differ?”

      He nodded, began to roll a cigarette.

      “Is dat Mister Differ’s lil boy Daddy?”

      Unpleasant subject. He frowned and said, “Now don’t start asking silly questions.”

      She fell silent, and gazing through the back door at the rain, turned over in her mind a mass of thoughts about this boy, who, since he did not look like one of those prohibited Dirty Little Niggahs, might make a playmate. She was allowed to play with Constance, which was very pleasant, although Constance was more than twice her age and evidently not as eager to play as she herself. Carried away by her thoughts she asked, “Daddy—who dat lil boy’s farver?”

      The question came as a shock, because it interrupted thoughts of Mark. He looked at her almost suspiciously, then said, “Go and play with your toys and don’t worry me.”

      He went outside and lounged about, occupying himself alternately with looking for leaks in the roof and studying his crouching nephew, till the rain stopped; then he went into the yard. After looking at Nawnim for a while as best he could—Nawnim slunk behind Muttonhead at his approach—he said to the blackfellow, “You takim piccanin back longa you boss.”

      “Wha’ name?” asked Muttonhead, shaking Nawnim from a leg.

      “Takim back longa Mister Ballest. Me no wantim. Him no-more belong me.”

      Muttonhead gaped for a moment, then said, “Carn do it.”

      Oscar frowned and snapped, “Don’t be cheeky or I’ll crack you.”

      Muttonhead cringed and said, “Mist Ballest him say, ‘Takim dat one pic Tonga Boss Chilnsik—him belong him brudder.’”

      “I don’t give a damn what he said. Takim back. Here’s some baccy—now then—what say?”

      “Tahng you very mush Boss,” said Muttonhead, placing a stick of tobacco behind each ear. Two sticks of tobacco valued at tuppence each were perhaps small reward for a forty-mile walk with a child on his back, but no more than he expected. But he continued to protest, saying, “Carn do it, Boss. Me no-more go back longa railer line lo-ng time. Me go foot-walk longa Lonely River country for lookim up Ol’ People.” He jerked his thick lips in the opposite direction to that in which he had come.

      “Then take the brat with you,” snapped Oscar, and walked off.

      Muttonhead turned out to be quite as bad as Ballest said. Oscar found that out some hours after dismissing him. He was superintending a job in the smithy when he heard a commotion in the kitchen and went to investigate and found Nawnim being belaboured by the lubra cook. The lubra turned an angry face when he entered the kitchen. Nawnim’s howls died in his gaping mouth.

      “What’s the matter?” demanded Oscar.

      “Him come sinikin longa brett,” cried the lubra, pointing to bread-tins that stood on the table ready for the oven. Nawnim tried to get behind her. She seized him, flung him back into exposure. He yelled.

      “Shut up!” shouted Oscar.

      There was dough on Nawnim’s face and hands, and on a leg of the table. Oscar stepped up and grabbed one of his skinny arms and demanded, “What name you no-more go away all-same me talk?” Nawnim blubbered and shrank away. “Which way Muttonhead?” demanded Oscar of the cook.

      “Him go longa Lonely River, Boss.”

      “Blast him!” cried Oscar. “Left me with the brat after all!” He looked at his captive, stared at him sourly for a while, then sighed and said, “Well I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, poor hungry little devil. God help you! Oh give him some tucker, Princess, and don’t hurt him. Get someone to wash him—he stinks.”

      Nawnim spent his first night at Red Ochre in the quarters of the native servants. It was not the servants’ choice, nor a particularly good one of their master’s, since the place was not so far away from the house as to leave the occupants unaware of what was going on there when the going-on was as loud as Nawnim’s. He wailed all night, set the dogs barking in the camp on the river and the dingoes howling in the bush and the pigs squealing in the sty and the horses snorting in the yards. The servants could pinch and punch and smother him into periods of silence, but could not still the external racket he had raised, which seemed to be worse when he was silent and to his ears quite devilish, so that before long he would be moved to start again. The red day dawned on a red-eyed household and on a half-caste brat who was covered with red wales and regarded with general malignity.

      Oscar gave him into the care of Constance Differ. All went well throughout the day, because he slept. When he woke at sundown he set up a worse wailing than ever, and tried to escape, so that Constance had to lock him in. He would neither sit nor lie, but stood in a corner with hands clasped behind, watching Constance and venting his incessant tearless grief. Constance was gentle and patient as no-one he had ever known but Anna. But she looked rather too much like Yeller Jewty. Differ tried his hand with him, first with food, then with dancing and singing and playing tricks, finally with a strap. At last Oscar rushed in and spanked by hand, and because the matter had become much worse, took Nawnim by the scruff of the neck and threw him at a blackfellow for removal to the camp. There was some peace in the homestead that night, but none on the river.

      Three days passed, during which the people of Red Ochre adapted themselves to broken sleep and kept away from the native camp. Oscar sent a message to the Siding to learn whether Jock had inquired after his uncoveted property, and learnt that he had not. He settled down to wait for word, hoping that Jock might not be drinking at Copper Creek and that he might not go on his way forgetting his responsibilities.

      On the afternoon of the fourth day Oscar was wakened from his siesta on the front veranda by sound of cat-like moaning in the yard below, and, rising to investigate, saw little Nawnim standing in the reddish shadow of a poinciana near the steps. Nawnim stopped moaning for about five seconds when Oscar’s head appeared, then resumed. Oscar stared in astonishment. It was obvious from the way in which the child was studying him that the moaning did not interfere with his ability to take an interest in things about him. In fact he was not so much weeping as expressing a vague sense of misery he had felt ever since parting with Fat Anna. He stood in his usual attitude of hands behind back and eyes glancing sideways.