Joe Wilson and His Mates [31]
but he was too uncomfortably practical and matter-of-fact for me.
Mary and I had some tea in the kitchen. The kitchen was permanently furnished
with a table of split slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes
driven into the ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood,
and two long stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves)
with auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.
The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace
was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole across,
with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.
Mary didn't seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool
near the fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.
Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been:
she was thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much
when she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was something
very German about her expression; also something aristocratic
about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she spoke.
There was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in figure and walk.
I used sometimes to call her `Little Duchy' and `Pigeon Toes'.
She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate knit
in her forehead between the eyes.
Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.
`What is it, Mary?'
She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed,
and irritated -- suffering from a reaction.
`Now, what is it, Mary?' I asked; `I'm sick of this sort of thing.
Haven't you got everything you wanted? You've had your own way.
What's the matter with you now?'
`You know very well, Joe.'
`But I DON'T know,' I said. I knew too well.
She said nothing.
`Look here, Mary,' I said, putting my hand on her shoulder,
`don't go on like that; tell me what's the matter?'
`It's only this,' she said suddenly, `I can't stand this life here;
it will kill me!'
I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.
`This is more than a man can stand!' I shouted. `You know very well
that it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this!
Why weren't you content to stay in Gulgong?'
`And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?' asked Mary quietly.
(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was.
A wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield.
One street, each side of the dusty main road; three or four
one-storey square brick cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron
that glared in the heat -- four rooms and a passage -- the police-station,
bank-manager and schoolmaster's cottages, &c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down
weather-board shanties -- the three pubs., the two stores,
and the post-office. The town tailing off into weather-board boxes
with tin tops, and old bark huts -- relics of the digging days --
propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when at home,
mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about
the verandah posts of the pubs., saying, `'Ullo, Bill!' or `'Ullo, Jim!' --
or sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened
each other's and girls' characters with their tongues,
and criticised the aristocracy's washing hung out on the line:
`And the colour of the clothes! Does that woman wash her clothes at all?
or only soak 'em and hang 'em out?' -- that was Gulgong.)
`Well, why didn't you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?' I asked Mary.
`You know very well, Joe,' said Mary quietly.
(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me.
I had had an idea of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores
-- I was a fair wool expert -- but Mary was afraid of the drink.
I could keep well away from it so long as I worked hard in the Bush.
I had gone to Sydney twice since I met Mary, once before we were married,
and she forgave me when I came back; and once afterwards.
I got a billet there then, and was going to