Ted winked at his toes. They ignored him. Two yards away in the lupins, shade was speckling them with light. Ted the Horizontal. His flesh looked to be a size too small for him. Probably it pinched him in the armpits and crutch.

A crow swore languidly from a safe branch overhear. Out of the homestead, hobbled a figure between two buckets. Ted sighted her between the toes of his left foot. ‘An uncommon pretty creature’, he thought. She struggled towards him.

‘Ba-a-a-h’, Ted baahed. She stopped and squinted sideways into the deep shade.

‘Sophie! Here Sophie!’

‘The name’s Ted, Miss.’ He stumbled out into the heat.

‘You larrikin!’ She bristled. ‘Why aren’t you out helping papa as you’re paid to be?!’ She hadn’t yet the cocky’s voice of other women.

Ted coughed as if he’d swallowed a fly. ‘Stoopin’ over ‘ard work makes my ‘eart bea’ dreadfuw.’ He managed a brave smile.

‘You’ve been in drink! And you no more than thirty-five!’

‘Us hypochondriacs are a dyin’ race Miss.’

‘God forgive your depravity!’ She caught a whiff of sweat and stepped back. This landless felon reminded her of a sheep’s behind.

‘A little grog is very nourishing at the end of the day, Miss.’

‘It is morning, rouge!’ She ploughed off through the grass.

In the tropical kitchen, Ted collapsed onto a stool. Mary squinted into a wall oven. ‘It’s only because you’re an English Protestant that papa hired you.’

Ted appealed to the rafters. ‘Praise Gawd I’m a Protestan’.’ He sneered at the floor. ‘Be’er than one o’them lewd Irish. In the prison o’ ’54, there wasn’ a sin tha’ wasn’ commi’ed, or dreamt abou’ and spoken ou’ loud. And the convic’s wos worse!’

‘Shush, you puppy’, Mary swore. She squinted into a steaming cauldron above the fire. ‘Oh, brother!’ Ted grinned and lusted for her naked elbows: the delicate set of bones wrapped in skin as fine as a kerchief. Nicer than his native woman’s salty beef.

‘It’s a quie’ life for me, Miss. Them Irish freewomen are too loyal t’ the Pope, and ladies of quality spend all their time a’ the piana.’ He watched her pout as she crossed the room.

‘Are you implying that I am not a lady of quality?’ She peered into a hole in a big barrel.

‘Oh, no. Bu’ I couldn’ ever consider spoonin’ wiv you, Miss.’ He stared at two handfuls of her rump. ‘Even if I am the only marriagebuw man for six miles.’

She spun and fired. ‘Six miles is not so far! And you!: a squalid wretch drenched in brandy all day!’ Ted gaped into a blaze of her attack. How red her ears were. She opened her mouth to cry, swallowed and turned angrily to her work.

Ted blinked. ‘Honest, it’s the terribuw sand-‘ole of a colony wot temp’s me to liquour. I detes’ this place!’

‘YOU?! Detest this colony of gentleman-land-owners?!’ She began rotating the barrel in its frame.’ This poor place discharges the moral sewage of England into its pure waters!’ She wound madly, as if the speech came out of the barrel. ‘We’re made look ridiculous in the eyes of our sister states!’

Ted exhaled. ‘Wew, soon’s my agreement’s up, I’m orf t’ the Victorian goldfields. A man’s worf some’ink there. And no point buyin’ land nobody wiw work on.’

‘Specially not you!’ Her mouth snapped shut.

Big, sandy bootsteps thumped at the front of the house. ‘Mary!’ called a voice like a tired ram’s.

‘Here papa!’ Through the lounge stumped a compact man.

‘Rudge! Why the devil aren’t you with the sheep?!’ His blackened, sweaty face looked as if someone had tried to set it on fire.

‘I’ve ‘ad sunstroke, sir.’ Ted massaged the back of his neck. ‘Besides, the boy sings too much.’

Drighton regarded Ted as if he were an empty waterhole. ‘This idleness will come out of your wages, scoundrel!’

‘Wha’ wages?’

Drighton drank some water from a covered jug. Over the cup, his eyes held Ted in his place.

‘Rudge, I want you to take the bullock cart up King Dick’s Line to York. I’ve some goods for my sister. You need not leave ‘till tomorrow.’

Ted swayed soberly to his feet. The shorter man watched like a lizard. ‘Wew sir, it’s no’ tha’ I wouldn’ like t’ oblige you, but my eyes ‘ave been made weak by that’ whi’ dust a’ Freman’le.’

‘Good gracious, man, that’s no excuse.’

‘And to tell you the trufe, I’m afraid of bush animawls.’

Drighton slapped the table. His breath sucked through his teeth. ‘Rudge, you are going.’

‘I could quie’ easily be speared for a pig by mistake!’

‘Mistake?! Rudge, if you are not obedient, I shall have you flogged!’ His face writhed like a struggling animal. ‘As magistrate I am able to do that!’ Drighton suddenly blushed for having shown his power. He spoke calmly.

‘Failing that, you will go into solitary.’

‘I’ll send a le’er to Lord Grey,’ Ted sulked. Drighton simply reached towards the axe in the rafters above his head.

The crows were up early, and stood about haw-hawing like men deranged by heat. ‘Shu’ up!’ cried Ted. The bullocks stamped at his feet as he lifted the beam across their shoulders and wired on the hoops. Working brought his cough on. Finally the cart bolted down the track towards town. ‘I’ll teach bleedin’ Drigh’en,’ he grumbled. Then he sang. His voice rose, frail and exotic in the dreadful bush. ‘Oh to Be in London Town’, he sang.

At the junction of King Dick’s Line, he turned the opposite way towards Guildford. Five miles brought him to the jetty where ‘Pioneer’ sat low in the river, her cargo stacked open to overhanging gums. He tied up the bullocks and approached the steamer.

‘Mornin’, Mr. ‘erpin,’ he said to an elegant man.

The man nodded slightly. ‘Rudge.’

‘Could you take me to Freman’le wiv your cargo, sir?’

‘I doubt we’d get a decent price for you at market, Rudge. Besides, hasn’t Mr. Drighton sent you to York?’ The man’s face was like a rock out of which a voice came.

‘er, yes. Bu’ firs’ I’m to ge’ some goods a’ the port.’ He felt wretched before the man’s cool gaze.

Almost a smile slit Herping’s face. ‘You can help unload.’ He walked away.

The steamer reached the coast. After the unloading, Ted sped as fast as leisurely indifference would allow through the small town. In the bay, he found two sailing ships.

Standing on the beach, reality got him between the eyes. Before him spread the ocean, wide and chopped about, as if countless picks had tried to dig an escape through it. It was obvious now he thought about it, that he couldn’t board a ship without papers. And if he stole some, it meant a likely seven year’s jail. Or there was bushranging. A stolen horse and a tin hat. But that was useless when people had nothing to steal. And if he joined ‘Moondyne Joe’ in the bush, he’d go madder than a cut snake.

Well, that’s that. ‘Bleedin’ ‘ell!’ He kicked sand into the air, and his boot came off.

He scanned the sea that stretched away like a desert. In its haze, rose the images of his past: the shuffle of feet in leg-irons, dull prison uniforms, the listless shamble of men doing someone else’s work. And above these, faintly, the high roves of London, razoring the air. The sky seemed so open. He trembled at an emptiness that smothered him. It spread like a vast and mirthless laugh. It drank his purpose.

Up at the jail, a guard was slumped on a stool just inside the main door. As Ted passed him going in, he staggered to his feet and groped around for his gun.

‘Hoy! State yer business!’

‘Eatin’ an’ sleepin’! Where do I do it?!’

Terry Tredrea

(Published in Patterns. Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Vol.8, No1)