front of her.
Intruders. Why do they always act cheerily? But he lost the cheery look, the young one, and backed off pretty smartly when he saw she wasn’t in any mood for cheery intruders. So did the glum-looking one with the camera in his hand. Then she was shouting, or was she? She was issuing orders. She was telling them to get off her property, and they backed off onto the road. At first shethought they might have been selling things, the things that hawkers all over the country sell. Then she saw their car. A fancy car that might be full of all sorts of fancy things that people never use, but buy anyway because they like the way they sparkle.
She soon realised they weren’t selling anything. They were from the newspaper, they said, which explained the fancy car. And they wanted to talk to her. A minute before that she had everything she needed. Her book, her solitude. Then two strangers wanted to talk to her. She knew why. It was the tent. It was her age. She was a curiosity. Oh, they didn’t say as much. But that was why they were here. And suddenly she’d felt like one of those stuffed figures in a museum. There were words. There was talk. Then the glum one raised his camera and took a photograph without asking. And that was that. She might have spoken to them. But not from that moment on. The cheek. The damned cheek. He may even have taken a second photograph before she turned and disappeared into her tent. And they were left on the road.
Yes, that was the sequence of events. She was reading. It was quiet. Then somebody called. Later, inside the tent, everything had become quiet again, apart from the sound of their motor car starting up, quite a long time afterwards, and she’d wondered what they’d been up to out there.
Now, at the end of the day, she has returned to her book. This lamp, which has been with her for most of her travels (and Katherine has travelled on coaches, trains, buses and on foot all over the country, not just for work,although there was always some sort of work to be found, but to see things), throws out an even, warm glow and continues to give her the comfort it always has.
But now she is tired. She removes her reading glasses and places them on a small table beside her fold-up bed. There is a dark wooden crucifix above the bed, a porcelain Jesus, yellowed with age, nailed to the cross. Katherine, as she has done every night of her life since she was a girl in a room she shared with her three sisters, sinks to her knees, brings her palms together and closes her eyes in prayer. For the day could never close until she knelt and prayed. Her lips move in the glowing, quiet tent, and there is the faintest sound of whispering.
Her prayer done, she rises and reaches out to the lamp beside her bed, and dims it. And it is precisely at this moment that Skinner, observing the dimming of the light from across the other side of the paddocks, turns back into the house. Katherine lies back, drifting into a doze, little realising that her light has been noted. More than noted — that her light has given comfort beyond the confines of her tent, out there, where the solitary figure of Skinner stood gazing upon it across the silvery long grass.
7.
The Absent Father
E verybody now dispersed, the mob that might have been his gone, ferried by trams out to the homes they left years before, Vic leaves the quiet city intersection and makes his way back into the rail yards, that part of the vast railway world of twisting tracks and idle engines called North Melbourne Loco. This is where he has left his bicycle. Even if there was petrol to be had, Vic, like practically everyone else in the city, could never afford a car. So Vic gets about on a bicycle. And with so little traffic around at this time of night (and it is not yet nine o’clock) it’s not difficult.
A whole chain of events has occurred since Vic sat down in the driver’s seat earlier that afternoon and brought his train and its sad cargo
Intruders. Why do they always act cheerily? But he lost the cheery look, the young one, and backed off pretty smartly when he saw she wasn’t in any mood for cheery intruders. So did the glum-looking one with the camera in his hand. Then she was shouting, or was she? She was issuing orders. She was telling them to get off her property, and they backed off onto the road. At first shethought they might have been selling things, the things that hawkers all over the country sell. Then she saw their car. A fancy car that might be full of all sorts of fancy things that people never use, but buy anyway because they like the way they sparkle.
She soon realised they weren’t selling anything. They were from the newspaper, they said, which explained the fancy car. And they wanted to talk to her. A minute before that she had everything she needed. Her book, her solitude. Then two strangers wanted to talk to her. She knew why. It was the tent. It was her age. She was a curiosity. Oh, they didn’t say as much. But that was why they were here. And suddenly she’d felt like one of those stuffed figures in a museum. There were words. There was talk. Then the glum one raised his camera and took a photograph without asking. And that was that. She might have spoken to them. But not from that moment on. The cheek. The damned cheek. He may even have taken a second photograph before she turned and disappeared into her tent. And they were left on the road.
Yes, that was the sequence of events. She was reading. It was quiet. Then somebody called. Later, inside the tent, everything had become quiet again, apart from the sound of their motor car starting up, quite a long time afterwards, and she’d wondered what they’d been up to out there.
Now, at the end of the day, she has returned to her book. This lamp, which has been with her for most of her travels (and Katherine has travelled on coaches, trains, buses and on foot all over the country, not just for work,although there was always some sort of work to be found, but to see things), throws out an even, warm glow and continues to give her the comfort it always has.
But now she is tired. She removes her reading glasses and places them on a small table beside her fold-up bed. There is a dark wooden crucifix above the bed, a porcelain Jesus, yellowed with age, nailed to the cross. Katherine, as she has done every night of her life since she was a girl in a room she shared with her three sisters, sinks to her knees, brings her palms together and closes her eyes in prayer. For the day could never close until she knelt and prayed. Her lips move in the glowing, quiet tent, and there is the faintest sound of whispering.
Her prayer done, she rises and reaches out to the lamp beside her bed, and dims it. And it is precisely at this moment that Skinner, observing the dimming of the light from across the other side of the paddocks, turns back into the house. Katherine lies back, drifting into a doze, little realising that her light has been noted. More than noted — that her light has given comfort beyond the confines of her tent, out there, where the solitary figure of Skinner stood gazing upon it across the silvery long grass.
7.
The Absent Father
E verybody now dispersed, the mob that might have been his gone, ferried by trams out to the homes they left years before, Vic leaves the quiet city intersection and makes his way back into the rail yards, that part of the vast railway world of twisting tracks and idle engines called North Melbourne Loco. This is where he has left his bicycle. Even if there was petrol to be had, Vic, like practically everyone else in the city, could never afford a car. So Vic gets about on a bicycle. And with so little traffic around at this time of night (and it is not yet nine o’clock) it’s not difficult.
A whole chain of events has occurred since Vic sat down in the driver’s seat earlier that afternoon and brought his train and its sad cargo
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