Free A River Town by Thomas Keneally Page B

with me. A secret intention.”
    “You need to resist the village rubbish they believe at home, Tim. Don’t for a moment consider yourself haunted.”
    Easy to bloody say.
    “Of course, when Constable Hanney came here, I realised I might be haunted myself if I let it happen … But don’t be superstitious about it.”
    “Somebody’s child, Father,” said Tim.
    “Exactly,” said the priest. “But everyone’s child goes to judgment.”
    Now Tim stood up. “Not to keep you any further …”
    “Hold hard, Tim. I’ll write you that Mass card. A sort of divine receipt if you like.”
    He didn’t want anything like that lying around the house to provoke Kitty.
    “No need for a card,” he said.
    The priest coughed and considered him. “Tim, you didn’t happen to know this girl, did you?”
    “No. Wish I had, in fact. Set her to rest.”
    As he left the priest picked up the crown from the verandah seat absent-mindedly. A non-avaricious man. Could afford to be, of course.
    Tim found that with his energetic nibbling Pee Dee had dislodged a fence paling.
    “You bloody blackguard!” Tim genially told the horse.
    He untethered the beast and led the dray quickly down the street, not getting up on the board until they were well past the Australia Hotel on the corner of Kemp and Elbow. Safe in the heart of secular Kempsey.

Three

    TWO DOZEN DELIVERIES to make now.
    Coming out of Mrs. Curran’s in River Street with the empty butter box he’d delivered goods in, he spotted old Dwyer on his horse, with the hessian saddlebags hung over its neck crammed with
Chronicles
. He saw women come to front fences and buy. And as he delivered goods further up the hill, he found that women smiled as they handed their money over for the delivered biscuits and treacle, sugar and tea. From the back doors, he saw the
Chronicle
was as often as not opened on their kitchen tables. One of his customers told him, “You’re a really decent chap, Mr. Shea.” Their cash had no reluctance to it today. None of them mentioned the scandalous prices of things. The few who asked for a week’s credit seemed ashamed to do it.
    One of life’s mysteries. That ordinary people paid well, and the bloody bush aristocrats with their Tradesman’s Entrances drained credit to its limit. Even Ernie and Winnie Malcolm who were so keen to nominate him for valour.
    Back at last to the junction of Belgrave and Smith, Pee Dee restive, himself yearning for black tea. He spotted his son Johnny swimming like a water rat around the pylons of the unbuilt bridge. The
Argus
and the
Chronicle
went to some lengths to explain to ratepayers that the most important work was the sinking of foundations, using a huge diving bell lowered by crane from a lighter. Men from Sydney who were used to that sort of work stood in thatbubble of air at the bottom of the green river and worked the digging and dredging machinery and sank the pylons in place. These men took their butter and chops at Allen’s Boarding House in East, as if they were ordinary fellows engaged in ordinary work. Johnny hung round them if given a whisper of encouragement.
    Tim got down from the cart on the embankment just past the store, and held Pee Dee’s head and called for his son. “Come out now. Don’t be a town ruffian. Come out!”
    The child sat bolt upright in the water, like a bloody weasel. Then he swam to shore and found his shirt. The trousers he’d swum in were all discoloured with the river’s alluvium, the rich soil which it picked up upstream. Kitty didn’t seem to mind any of this, or the idea of a six-year-old swimming about in that massive river.
    “You aren’t cold?” he asked the boy.
    The boy said, “No.”
    Tim shook him by the shoulder. “You are to keep out of the river, sir. I’ll give you a bloody great whack.”
    “That’s right,” said the boy. He mimed a bloody great whack with one open hand against the other.
    “It won’t be as funny when it happens,” said Tim.