Capricornia. Xavier Herbert
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Название: Capricornia
Автор: Xavier Herbert
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007321087
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For three rather miserable days Oscar lounged about the town, trailing or carrying Nawnim, since Heather was usually too busy to mind him and he would not suffer the company of others. Then the problem of disposing of the burden suddenly appeared to solve itself. Freddie Radato, the half-caste Philippino barber, while shaving Oscar one morning and talking about Nawnim, who sat near, offered to take care of him for thirty shillings a week till Mark returned. Oscar jumped at the offer. He left Nawnim in the saloon. But he did not experience the feeling of relief he had expected. He left Nawnim howling, and, because Radato’s house was near the hotel, heard him howling for hours afterwards. And he felt distinctly mean about abandoning him. Next morning at breakfast, to the sound of Nawnim’s howls, he confessed to Heather that he had come to like him.
When three days later the doctor came and told him that he must take Nawnim away from Radato’s at once because one of the Radato children had contracted measles, Oscar was not really dismayed. That night he took him to Tommy Tai Yun’s open-air picture-show and showed him his first moving pictures. Next day he took him aboard the mail-boat and showed him the wonders it contained, including the captain’s monkey, which he was even moved to try to buy for him. The days that followed were by no means miserable. There were more pictures—free pictures this time, because the last performance had been interrupted in the middle by a thunderstorm—and motor-rides out to Tikatika Point, and a fishing expedition down the jetty. Oscar came to find pleasure in watching Nawnim’s delight in these simple entertainments, and in teaching him to speak English properly. And he came to feel that it would be pleasant to introduce him to the mighty world as he had dreamt of introducing Roger. But at the same time he did not entirely give up trying to dispose of him nor forget to write to Mark a stinging letter in which he stated that if he refused to accept his responsibilities he would see that an action for affiliation was brought against him.
At length the day of the return journey came. Nawnim went down to the train with Oscar in Joe Crowe’s cab, clad in a neat little khaki suit and khaki topee. The rest of his belongings were packed away in Oscar’s bag, together with pencils and pads and slates and primers and picture-books. Oscar led him through the crowd with little of the shame he had felt when last he trod that ground with him. And Nawnim, holding the big brown hand he had come to love, felt none of the fear he had felt there only six weeks before.
Just as the train was moving out, a yellow face, round as the moon at full and wide-eyed and open-mouthed, came bobbing through the crowd towards the open window of the coach where Oscar and Nawnim stood, screaming, “Nawnee—Nawnee!” He recognised it. His eyes brightened. His body tensed.
“Nawnee—Nawnee! Hello lil manee—which way you walkim?”
“Who’s that?” asked Oscar, leaning out to stare—to stare back as the train passed on.
It was Fat Anna. But Nawnim did not know her name, nor much about her beyond the fact that she was something pleasant come suddenly out of the misty past. She was soon lost to view. Thus Oscar never realised how close he came to solving the problem completely.
They returned to Red Ochre. And as though it were true that clothes make a man, before many weeks were out, little Nawnim, under the respectable name of Norman, came to live in the Shillingsworth household as a Shillingsworth of the blood.
MARK’S pearling-expedition took him far. He made the acquaintance of most of the islands of the Silver Sea, Australian, Dutch, and Portuguese, and many of the Coral Sea as well. He might never have returned had he not been forced to do so when, towards the end of 1914, Freedom of the Seas suddenly ceased to be. The Spirit of the Land was dogged from island to island by gunboats, like a city loafer by police, received with suspicion at every port, sent on her way again and again, till at last she fell in with a particularly officious gunboat that escorted her home.
Oscar had almost forgotten Mark. The first he heard of his return was when he was disputing over the telephone with a Chinese storekeeper in town concerning £30 worth of stores he had not bought. The Chinaman told him that Mark had bought the stores in his name. Mark was at the time away on the Christmas Banks, pearl-fishing. He had bought the stores to go there, believing that he would be back with means to pay the bill before it was presented. Oscar had to pay to avoid the cost and inconvenience of having to face the legal action with which the Chinaman threatened him. He was furious. For a while he contemplated proceeding against Mark as he had not long before against Peter Differ for a similar imposition. It was only the thought of the severe lesson he had learnt in Differ’s case that restrained him.
Differ had long since drunk himself out of Oscar’s employ. He had taken up land on Coolibah Creek, a tributary of the Lonely River, where, with Government assistance, he had planted peanuts. He was also reluctantly assisted by Oscar to the tune of some £50 while preparing his plantation. In spite of this, one time while in town he bought £20 worth of stores in Oscar’s name from a storekeeper who thought that he was still employed by Oscar. He did so in belief that he would be able to pay the bill, before it was presented, out of the profits from the sales of his first crop of nuts, the harvesting of which was about to begin, considering himself forced to adopt such means, because no storekeeper would give credit to one who must hand over his crop for marketing to his principal creditor, the Government. Unfortunately the price of peanuts was not nearly as high when the Government sold his crop as it was when he made bold to impose on Oscar. There was just enough profit to meet the Government’s demands.
The Differ affair happened at a time when Oscar was deeply worried by his own affairs. The cattle-market was dead as far as Capricornia was concerned. The cruel part of it was that the trade was elsewhere very much alive. According to reports from South, Australian beef was being exported as fast as butchered at prices high and in quantities large as never before. Butchery was the order of the day, just then. A great war has broken out in Europe. Yet not a pound of meat went out of Capricornia.
The Port Zodiac meatworks, which was flourishing at the time of Oscar’s entry into grazing, had been closed for some years. The loss of this trade had not been felt so much, because, as it had slowly declined, the trade in cattle on the hoof with the Philippines, incipient at the time of Oscar’s entry, had increased in a manner more than compensatory. Now the Philippines’ market had also failed, had suddenly collapsed, indeed, owing to the very thing responsible for the great prosperity of grazing in the South—the European War.
It happened thus. The cattle-steamer Cucaracha, already a vehicle of trouble for Oscar, had been arrested for trafficking with a German raiding-cruiser prowling about the Silver Sea. Her people were American citizens of Spanish and Philippino origin and hence in no way bound to favour any party in the hostilities; but the rights of Neutrals were not receiving much reverence anywhere at the time from those maintaining Freedom of the Seas; she was locked up in some sort of nautical prison while a lengthy argument on International Law went on. A complicated business. A diabolic business it was to Oscar, the devil behind it that Damned Dago Gomez, and the design of it another cowardly blow at himself. So he thought, although he knew that Captain Gomez had changed his ship immediately after helping Jasmine to СКАЧАТЬ