1915 by Roger McDonald

rest, it was plain that he wanted things to get worse.
    â€œYeah, I hear Wally’s ‘in love’.”
    â€œGo on,” breathed Ned with thick wonder.
    â€œOh, he told a friend of mine all about it,” said Blacky, “and a very touching tale it was too. The only thing is” — and here he spoke to Mrs Pepper alone — “the lass herself ain’t sure it’s mutual.”
    â€œStanley Reid!” admonished the woman, realizing too late what had happened. Walter gave Blacky a hard stare, and from the corner of his eye saw Billy slip from the dray and head back to his horses.
    â€œA barmaid is a wonderful talker,” observed Blacky to the world. He poured his tea-leaves clot by clot to the ground and rested his mug upside down on the dray.
    The Schulers seemed barely aware of what had happened. They nodded to each other and thanked Mrs Pepper with pleasureless smiles. For the rest of the day, though, Walter took refuge in their company. He was wild at himself for not hitting back straight away, yet any attempt at redress would have been hopeless — he felt himself floundering at the centre of a ring of raised and mocking eyebrows.
    Still, at dusk, when he and Billy sat on the veranda after their wash, he tried to wrest things back.
    â€œWhat’s Blacky been saying, eh?”
    But Billy merely shrugged, sneezed, and cursed the wheat dust.
    At tea-time Eddie Harkness rolled up to the front of the house driving his father’s “Hudson 33”, a motor car as sleek as a dressed plank.
    The inspection called for several lamps to be lit, and a rag to wipe clean the inquisitive paw marks of old Pepper.
    â€œWho wants a run to town?” Eddie beamed, showing his white teeth, and exhausted as they were, Blacky, Ned and Billy piled in, leaving Mrs Pepper’s apple pie untasted in the kitchen.
    â€œWhat about you?” asked Eddie as he fiddled with his expensive gloves. His father owned the general store. Eddie took what he wanted.
    â€œI’m buggered,” said Walter.
    Off they went shouting and singing — someone yodelled “Ta-ta my bonnie Maggie darling” down at the gate, and Walter knew he was the cause of thelaughter that followed. The acetylene headlamps peered weakly back as the car swung around and negotiated the dry creek.
    With its owners gone the house seemed friendly. When the table was cleared and the dishes washed and stacked away, and her old man gone outside to fetch wood, Mrs Pepper apologized for getting things wrong at morning tea.
    â€œIt wasn’t you,” said Walter, staring at the stains on the bare wood table: cigarette burns, the brown rings of hot saucepans, dark clouds of liquid drifting down the years.
    â€œYou’re not like the others, I can see that now.”
    â€œAren’t I.” It was a dull statement, not a question.
    â€œThey’re just a mob of no-goods.” She spoke with fire. “I could tell you things about Blacky Reid that ought to hang him.”
    It appeared she was serious.
    â€œTake Ned,” she continued, “he’s not lazy, but he’s got no purpose. Which is the worst? He’s Blacky’s dog.”
    â€œWhy do you help them out?”
    â€œFor his sake,” she nodded to the thump, thump coming from behind the kitchen wall as her husband stacked wood. “You’re a hard worker too,” she smiled, “but you’ve got something better than this life on your mind.”
    â€œNo,” contended Walter, but he couldn’t work out what to say. Would Mrs Pepper understand dreams — the “maybe” of not ever shifting, but scrutinizing the life that swirled under motionless things? Walter mistrusted his own convictions.
    And Frances — he wasn’t going to talk about her.
    â€œI know Martha Bryant,” said Mrs Pepper, referringto the barmaid at the Royal. “She was married to a parson, did you know? But