Gatherers and Hunters Page 11

  Shale was still mixed in with the clay and the compost, and the first potatoes he uncovered seemed to nestle under and around those lumps of pure rock, or perhaps even to split them up with their subterranean energies and movement. Perhaps a couple of seasons with spuds and they would do the work of their own accord, saving him effort with the pick and mattock like this time last year when he first began the bed’s preparations. A bed had to be dug, and aired, and composted, and then dug again, and given time to settle, his father had always said. Bernard had rationed his activities and the result was now paying off. The first spuds are generous, more than he hoped for, if he is honest. They will keep, though; they are not the starchy variety that rots easily.

  Digging for half an hour, almost ready to call it a day (he looks at his watch: 6.15, give it another ten), Bernard rests on the shovel and wipes the sweat off his brow and the top of his head. It is bald now and his weekly barber visit has become a farce, but old Ernie needs the business. It is one of the little duties that stuck. It is an old habit. Gazing idly down he can see a potato he has missed, among the upturned rubble and shards. He bends down.

  Stuck to the tuber with clay there is a rather large, flat stone. With clay sticky hands Bernard wrenches it off and is about to toss it over to the fence, where he has thrown several other larger stones. Something catches his eye. He looks closer. The potato had split the shale – two pieces fall neatly apart in his hand. He rubs his eyes. He wipes one hand on the old trousers and pulls out his spectacles from the ­buttoned-up shirt pocket (Too many times he has had to slouch back to the shed for them. He knows how to rationalise his movements, a real time and motion expert). Putting them on his nose he looks closer.

  It is a fossil. A fossilised sprig of leaves. Not a fern, something larger than that. More like the leaves of the Queensland kauri pine in the Municipal Gardens. A multi­pennate sprig, he thinks, remembering from somewhere. Seven, no eight, leaves neatly branching out from a single stem. They are remarkably lifelike, almost as if they had not been underground long enough to rot or decay. And that is the point: the slow process of earth, of weight and heat and enclosure have taken this one twig of an ancient tree and pressed it to its heart. It has been immortalised. Fossilised.

  Bernard stares at it for a long time. Something as ephemeral as a single twig of a tree, no doubt one of thousands of trees that had grown and lived here sometime, something that had seemed ordinary and simply part of the busy or lazy life of the valley, Now it was singled out. Now it was made special. All of the endless days, one like another, and he was able to see them as a preparation for this, this accidental uncovering, this discovery. And he had made it. It was his. Discovery is not the new, or the novel – it is the recognition.

  It was not easy to describe what he had found, even to himself. Bernard’s jokes had not prepared him. He found himself trying to uncover fossil jokes; he was already thinking of how he might try it out with Jean first, and then even make it part of his line with the customers, who must be told of the information in that letter and the closure of the bank and the end of the eighty-five years of continual commerce that it represented. He must indeed think of how to break the news lightly, how to ease the pain.

  The potato had broken the slab of shale lightly, to uncover the fossil. It was not Bernard, it was part of the underground life of the spud. The fossil was part of the underground life of the soil, that was more like it. The whole place was full of forgotten or hidden histories, none of it was virgin soil, none of it was meaningless. Grinning to himself now, Bernard moved automatically up to the house, ten minutes early, and with his working boots still on. He tramped into the kitchen as he was, without the surface washing that always preceded the shower. He stomped over the floral carpet of the living room. His wife was setting the table. They always ate at the main table even though the kids have long left them. It was one of their routines.

  ‘I found this,’ he announces, but Jean sees only an ochre-coloured slip of rock. When he points out the fossil and the seven – no eight – leaves with the stem almost as precise in its fibres and veins as a living twig, she is about to say ‘Really’ and then chide him. But something about his look, almost boyish and wide-eyed, makes Jean remember, quite suddenly, the young man she had first courted and who had to be nudged into marriage. Those had been exhilarating days and she had felt the first surge of fulfilment.

  ‘Should you advise somebody? The Museum perhaps?’ she says, instead. And they both grow rather excited, as if they had unearthed some real treasure. Almost as if they had unearthed a mastodon tooth or the shoulder of a pterodactyl.

  Later, Bernard looked up the World Book Encyclopaedia that had not been touched since the kids, and could find nothing that might classify their fossil. It was a tree, they decided, not a shrub or a grass or a creeper. But that was only because it reminded him so much of the kauri leaves. That night he stayed up unusually late and they talked about the news which had broken upon him earlier. He finally was able to broach that with his wife.

  He had not mentioned the telephone call two days before. He had lived with that contained in his procedures and his habits. He had rationed himself carefully. It had remained inside. It had fermented.

  When it did come out, finally, in the long talk around the table as the gravy grew cold and the steak bones were declaring themselves and the slivers of fat were congealing on the sides of their plates, Bernard was quite open; he almost made it a joke, though he did not call himself an old fossil and he did not actually utter the word ‘retirement’. Jean realised that Port Douglas was out of the question. She had always felt they were living on credit.

  But it was possible to discuss their future. That was like a burden lifted, like a long weight of clay that over the past two days had weighed down this news upon him. He did not speak of himself at all, really; he spoke about the town and the economic effects of the bank’s closure. He joked that the only person to benefit would be the Shell service station. Everyone would have to drive into Somerset to do their banking. And their shopping. Fuel usage would increase. ‘That’s if anyone can afford to pay for their petrol,’ he added, and they both laughed as if that were a joke. Shut-down. Closure. Even as they discussed it they could not believe it.

  ‘What will happen to the records?’ Jean asked.

  ‘They will go into archives,’ Bernard answered, but that did not encompass the history of the whole town as expressed in those figures, lists and records. It would be submerged and forgotten.

  The fossil had been washed of its clay, very carefully. It sat on one of the Noritake platters for most of the meal, and after the long talk and the almost delighted realisation that they had missed the TV news and the 7.30 Report as well as Quantum, Bernard had picked it up yet again. Why did he feel so elated? Why did a commonplace thing like an unearthed fossil – in a district well known for its fossil potential, hadn’t the University sent students here for decades? – why did it leave him feeling – what?

  Positive, was the only word that came to him, but it was other than that, more than that. He could not explain it, even to himself, but it made him feel curiously connected.

  ‘Now I know what a scientist feels,’ he quipped to his wife, as he did the drying up. ‘Or an explorer. Or a discoverer. Silly, isn’t it? But I will take you up, dear, and phone the Museum tomorrow. Though it is probably nothing valuable.’

  ‘It’s valuable to you, though. To us.’ And Jean passed him the Noritake platter, which he handled carefully, though his thoughts were elsewhere.

  The person at the museum was cautious but just a little responsive. Could he bring it in for identification? Was he ever in Brisbane? Very well, the week after next, then.

  Bernard was just a little regretful when the Museum took it from him. ‘You’ve heard of the Wollemi pine? The one they discovered in Wollemi National Park a few years back, that they thought extinct for millennia? Related to the bunya and the hoop pine and the kauri. It was known only
from fossils. Well, I’m not saying this is a fossil of a Wollemi pine but we’d like to do tests. Tell you the truth, Bernard (why were these public servant types always so familiar?) I’m just a little bit excited myself. It must be exciting for you, too, if you have uncovered something really interesting?’

  But the excitement had been subsumed by the ordinary events of living and confronting his future and his customers who had all been sympathetic though quietly angry. Bernard had forgotten the moment of discovery and that long animated conversation at the dining room table, when he and Jean had been close in a way that both seemed almost to have forgotten.

  He had even forgotten to gather up the freshly harvested potatoes until the next evening. They had enjoyed them, though, and they were not really surprised that Bernard poked further, but had turned up no new fossils.

  The Museum never returned the treasure, and, indeed, Bernard never discovered what they finally made of it. When his garden bed had been dug up and thoroughly prepared a second time, Bernard planned to grow legumes. Then, the following year, it would again be potatoes.

  The day that the bank closed its doors, finally, he decided to make it a picnic, under the Kauri pine in the Town Gardens. Bernard’s potato salad would be remembered. Nobody had turned up yet from Head Office to look after the official bank archives, which Bernard had labelled, tabulated and prepared according to a system that had already been forgotten in the big offices in the city.

  But at the last minute Bernard knew he had a final duty to his customers. All his scrupulous personal notes and annotations on every bank client over his entire career at this branch – a veritable history of the town – had been kept in the red filing cabinet in his office. How could he allow all that to be consigned to some dusty vault or even a shredding machine in an anonymous basement?

  Bernard carefully conveyed his alphabetical files to the little back sewing room which he now made into an office in his own home. For the first month after the bank premises had been locked and the building stood empty and dusty Bernard went through all these files and memos, discarding a few, reorganising others. He would dress in his suit and business tie each morning and even, for a little while, made his ritual local visits – the weekly barber, the newsagent, morning coffee every second day in Whiteheads Cafe with the postmaster and the solicitor and the local police inspector. But his records claimed him, finally.

  Much later, after he had done everything possible to tabulate and finalise all his records, he was watching The Gardening Show with his wife one evening and was intrigued by a demonstration of composting that used wads of old papers. They disintegrated with surprising speed under a mulch or a load of good heavy earth. The demonstration featured how a clay patch had been rendered malleable and suitable for roses.

  The next morning Bernard went out early, in his old gardening clothes so that even his wife was surprised. He spent an hour digging and preparing. Then he went to the little sewing room and came out with the first of the dun-coloured manilla folders. Carefully he layered them, one by one, in alphabetical order. Then he applied the half broken-up clods of clay interspersed with some rough sand from the ancient children’s playpit. He covered it all with what he could find of mulch from the compost heap. He rubbed his hands together and went indoors.

  The next morning again he dressed in his gardening shirt and the old saggy tweeds. Without thinking of the effect he wandered down at 10.15 to the cafe.

  It was the day for morning tea.

  Furry Animals

  Pity is the most dangerous of passions. Sympathy is almost as bad. You think you are strong, in control, and generous when you pity someone or something. You are at your most vulnerable.

  Take yesterday. The heart can be sickened, I tell you. It’s like indecent exposure – it’s not the visual demonstration of miscellaneous body parts, but the willingness of it all. It repels. Similarly, yesterday’s display made me cringe. It was outside Flinders Street Station, on those steps where hardened druggies lounge and have commerce with teenage rebels who pretend that black leather and lots of decorative chains make them, too, hardened. You know the scene.

  Yesterday midday. Shopping crowds, lunchtime crowds. The regulars had taken their positions and so hardly moved to let the ordinaries pass through. The vendor of news­papers and plastic-covered girlie magazines was taking the sun while it was there. Two policepersons strolled through like ­familiars, checking out or lining up or seeing who’s new. Every now and then a dusty, gusty wind wiped its sleeve across people’s eyes to make them sting with the grittiness of the place.

  And the trams continued to rattle jerkily by, clumps of them like goats stopping for water, and then long periods when not a one jostled into view.

  Weekday ordinary. It’s precisely that sort of time when you start to shove your elbows out and your briefcase in the battering-ram position. And yesterday morning had been more than usually fraught. Moira had phoned. Worse; she had threatened to come in. So of course it was inevitable that I decided it was necessary to take the train out to Hawthorn for that audit job I had been putting off. The train, because I could check through the files on the way. Trains are always more relaxing. Relaxation is important. Relaxation, in my job, is essential. Moira is not good for personal relaxation. Moira is not good for anything, except reminding me of the children’s expenses. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children. But to have an ex-wife who was my senior in the other accountancy practice is not inducive of relaxation. She even adds-in postage stamps and itemised lolly-wrappers when she presents her monthly Statement of The Children’s Expenses. She is a lolly-wrapper person herself and I know the dental bills, in due course, will be higher than the laundry lists. On the weekends when I have access I empty out their pockets and their back-packs on arrival (though I return the confiscated confectionary on departure. I am scrupulous in this as in other things.). As I cleared a space outside Young and Jacksons, waiting for the green light, I tried to put Moira out of mind, and to focus on the last Hawthorn audit when, as I recall, there was a matter of a ninety cent shortfall in the Petty Cash register.

  I allowed myself to become engrossed in the problem, even though I knew that as soon as I got into the carriage I could verify from my notes (was it ninety cents or ninety-five cents?). I almost missed the green light.

  It was in that sort of slightly inconvenient but sufficiently distracting lunchtime buzz of activity that I knew thoughts of Moira might happily be replaced by more realistic priorities: such as, would I have to wait more than ten minutes for the Belgrave or Lilydale train? And, if so, would I cost-in that travelling time onto the client cards? Or would I be generous, and take out my raisin-and-vegemite sandwich, in which case it would be not travelling time but lunchtime?

  It was in the midst of such a fine nuance of considerations, on the very steps of Flinders Street Station, that the giant furry koalas appeared.

  Big, person-size koalas. Koalas of the appropriate grey colour with big white ears and carrying plastic buckets which they rattled.

  I guessed these grey koalas were Greens.

  I was not close enough to see if they had banners, or leaflets to distribute, or even if they had SAVE THE WILDERNESS stencilled on their koala chests. I suspect they did not carry in their pouches receipt books with the appropriate authorisations allowing donations of over $2 as concessional deductions under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 As Amended. I also suspect they were not GST Exempt.

  None of this, it seems, had daunted them. They were not timid little pets or Protected Species at that particular moment. They were soliciting in public.

  That, really, was when I realised that we are victims of our juices of pity, captive to our own sympathetic drives. We fashion our own passion into unguarded vulnerability. I was glad I did not have Amelia and Louise with me. It is not good to see your own father wanting to run away from such a koala onslaught.

  Those yellow plastic buckets were weighing the koalas down with gifts. Mai
ntaining with dignity a deliberate pace I did notice that not even the two policepersons had queried the operations of those creatures.

  More. Those two furry creatures stood in front of the most hardened toughs, not speaking, not waving, and I actually witnessed how those defensively snarling faces broke into soft lines around the mouth and eyes and an altogether different cast of jaw. Grandmothers would have said, ‘I knew there was some good in Ted or Tess,’ and fathers would have wiped a brawny forearm across their eyes to stop the tear dropping into their beer. They would have mumbled, ‘Course I kicked ’em out, they was getting out of hand. Shoulda seen ’em when they was kids but. Jeez, shoulda seen ’em.’ Fathers, mothers also, walking towards the January sales in Myers shoved into purse or pocket for a coin when the Giant Cuddly Bears stepped in front of them. I was right to feel under pressure. Thank God the children were not with me, I would have committed unpardonable acts of generosity. As it was, I even saw one of the policepersons throw a $2 coin. It was with some relief that I noticed the other policeperson look the other way. Vulnerability takes all of us at unexpected moments.

  It was clear that the second policeperson had been caught by furry creatures once too often. That one had no time for pity. But I caught myself imagining (as I saw her standing arms akimbo while she waited for her gullible male partner) that she was speculating whether the furry bear whose yellow bucket was still thrust forward invitingly would be male or female. She was a clearly an officer of the law after my own heart. A sort of Honorary Auditor. I imagined her demanding a public unzip.

  No, nothing like that happened. I am, after all, a responsible citizen. Any public exposure is, after all, indecent. As it was, I was feeling particularly exposed. I hoped that nobody had recognised me, though one of the advantages of using public transport for small audit jobs is that measure of anonymity. Nobody suspects you. And you often hear the most revealing conversations. I have a friend in the Tax Audit Branch who enjoys my confidences. The furry bears went on their way towards the Saved Forest. The skinheads wiped the sweat off their shorn features and remembered what they were here for. The newspaper vendor remained inviolate. The two policepersons plied their trade. Another tram came into sight up near the War Memorial.