There was no contempt in her voice: it was too well-trained, had read too many private telegrams over the radio: it was impersonal as a news reader’s. But there was no mistaking the look in the eyes: they would never be able to disguise what the girl thought. Stephen turned away from her and clambered into the back of the truck beside Tristram.
“I want to talk to Jack. Don’t worry about my getting dirty.”
Kate drove as if she had never been troubled by traffic nor traffic lights. The truck bumped along the rutted road at fifty miles an hour; it sucked in dust behind it in a thick red cloud. Stephen sat on his bag, clutching at the sides of the truck with both hands; the flies had fled as soon as the dust had begun to swirl in.
“What’s the matter with her?” Stephen had to shout above the noise of the truck. “What’s she got against me?”
“She’ll be all right!” Tristram had taken his teeth out as soon as they got into the back of the truck; his lips and gums were rimmed with a red paste of spittle and dust. “She’s always like that with strangers from down south!”
“What about Covici? He sounded as if he was expecting me!”
The truck lurched and Tristram sprawled against Stephen. “I told ’em you were coming up here to look at the Flying Doctor set-up! What else did you come for?”
Stephen, already stiff and sore, his mouth full of dust, said nothing. He had gone out to the airport at Mascot a week ago to farewell Tristram and had then told him he would be coming to Winnemincka. There in the noisy bustling waiting-room it had somehow been difficult to tell Tristram he would be coming north only as a form of retreat, to escape from the surroundings that had begun to fit him too tightly, like a weil-worn suit that had all at once become a straitjacket; he was not even making a sentimental journey, because he was too matter-of-fact to feel sentiment about a place he could barely remember. He had just told Tristram he would be coming, and left it at that. And Tristram, still seeing in him the faint ghost of Tom McCabe, had made his own conclusion.
Then they were coming into Winnemincka. Mangrove swamps stretched out a mile or more to the copper-tinged slash of the sea: a memory came back to Stephen, something he had read at school or perhaps his father had told him, of a forty-foot tide on this part of the north-west coast. Behind the town the flat-topped mountain rose steeply like a giant red anvil; eagles cruised above it, small black crosses against the faded blue of heaven. The town had only one street: half mile long and fifty yards wide: it had once been a cattle track A mob of cattle under a slow thin cloud of dust moved down the street now, headed towards the meat-works at the shore end of the mile-long jetty; the truck swept round the cattle, brushing against a rough fence in front of a ramshackle cottage, and went on down the street. They went by an immense boab standing squarely in the middle of the road, like some bloated giant with his numerous arms raised in agony: another memory came back to Stephen, one of experience this time, of games played in the broken shade of this tree with half a dozen aboriginal and half-caste children. The truck went by two single-storied hotels, spinning dus’t towards the men who lounged on the wide verandas: Stephen noticed that one of the hotels had no glass in any of its windows: a man climbed out of a window as they went by, lugging a heavy sack after him, ignored by the men on the veranda.
“This place was a busy port back in the old days,” Tristram gasped through the dust. “Had ten thousand people here, one time. Got a hundred and fifty now, counting the half-castes and the meat-workers when they come up for the season.”
They passed the ruin of the Grand Hotel, a two-storied structure with no roof; a strip of ornamental railing hung from an upper balcony like tattered lace. A goat chased by two dogs came bounding out of the shell of another large building.
“The Music Hall,” said Tristram, and Stephen saw the faded and peeling posters on the crumbling walls: Matt Mia, Lightning Sketch Artist, The Golden Girls, a long line of black-stockinged legs faded and rat-chewed. “Now we have pictures once a week in the open air. Marilyn Monroe and a million mosquitoes, all for five bob.”
The truck slowed abruptly and came to a halt: dust billowed in in a thick cloud. It cleared and Stephen saw Kate Brannigan looking at him. “You’ll get used to the dust, Dr. McCabe. It’s part of the diet up here.”
Stephen climbed out and took his bag as Tristram handed it to him. Dust was thick on his clothes and on his face, but he would not give Kate Brannigan the satisfaction of seeing him brush it off; he even managed to ignore the flies that descended on him like black hail.
“This is where you’ll be staying, with the doc,” Tristram said, the dust cracking on his face like a crumbling mask. “I’m dossed out in the pindan with me mate. I didn’t think you’d wanna be out there.”
“I should damned well think not,” said Covici. “Where else would a doctor stay in this flea-hole but at the hospital? I can tell you, Steve, this is the only decent accommodation in town. We’ve always got more patients here than the pubs have guests.”
The hospital was a low rambling building that looked as if it had been added to, a room at a time. A wide veranda, screened with fine wire-netting, ran right round the building; the two cottages on either side of the main building were protected from the sun and the flies in the same way. Behind the main building a windmill flashed a meaningless heliograph in the bright sun; Stephen wondered where the breeze that drove it was coming from, because he could feel none where he stood. Beyond the gate at which the truck had pulled up, stretching right across the front of the hospital and its two attendant cottages, were a lawn and a garden, both brown and dusty looking: two crows walked on the lawn, deathly impersonators of peacocks. A gin went slowly round the side of the main building, a bundle of washing on her head, two naked piccaninnies clutching at her skirt. Somewhere inside the hospital a baby cried, and a bell rang in a tinny summons.
“That’s my place,” said Covici, pointing to the cottage on the left. “And that’s the radio base. Kate lives there.”
The second cottage was slightly larger than Covici’s. Behind it a tall radio mast stabbed at the empty sky, as if defying the space above it: this had been a land of vast silence till the radio had come to dispel the loneliness and, sometimes, the helplessness.
“I’d like to see you at work some time,” Stephen said to Kate.
“Any time,” said Kate, and opened the gate and walked up the path that led to her cottage.
Stephen gave in to the flies: he smote savagely at them. Then he followed Covici and Tristram up another path to Covici’s cottage. A wooden sign nailed to the door proclaimed feebly in peeling paint: Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.
II
A man sat in the shade of the veranda. He rose as the three men came in the screen door. He was tall and slim, dressed in a bright red shirt, pale blue denim trousers stuck into the tops of fancy riding-boots, a yellow neckerchief and a Stetson with a fancy braided chin-strap; only when he took off the hat did Stephen notice that he was a full-blooded aborigine.
“This is Charlie Pinjarra, me mate,” said Tristram. “We been together now about ten years. We’re heading down to Wattle Creek when we get the word.”
“G’day, Steve.” Charlie Pinjarra had a soft musical voice, one that sounded as if it might never have been raised in anger or protest. “Jack used to tell me a lot about your father.”
Stephen took the slim firm hand offered to him. It was the first time in twenty-five years he had shaken hands with a black man; another memory came back, of a boy’s farewell to a shy aboriginal child, one whose name he couldn’t remember. He was glad now of the dust on his face: it might help disguise the surprise he felt at the fact of Tristram’s mate being a black fellow. He had