The Far Country by Nevil Shute
He went ahead of her on the narrow path, forcing the bushes aside where they grew thickly and holding them back for her to pass. The path wound along through the forest by the river, a narrow track used only by the forest ranger on his horse and by an occasional fisherman on foot. Presently they crossed the river again, and then a third time, and a fourth, as the path changed from side to side to avoid spurs and rocky outcrops.
It was very quiet in the forest. The sunlight fell in dappled patches on the undergrowth through the sparse foliage of the gum trees; an occasional parrot squawked and flew away ahead of them, but they saw no animals. They went on till they came to a red stone bluff on the north side of the river; the path wound round this, and Carl Zlinter stopped. “It is somewhere here,” he said. “There must have been a road here at one time, from the town, but there is nothing to see now. I think the stones are over there somewhere.”
Jennifer said, “What’s that—over there, by the white tree?”
“That is right. That is one of them.” He guided her through the undergrowth of bracken and tea tree scrub, and they came to the three stones that were still standing. He stooped beside the furthest one, and rubbed the surface of it. “This is the one.”
She stooped beside him, and read the inscription. She had never doubted his story, but it was a satisfaction to her to see the carved letters with her own eyes. “Charlie Zlinter and his dog,” she said quietly. “It was nice of them to bury the dog with him.”
He looked at her and smiled. “That old Irishman, he said the priest would not have allowed it, but he did not know.”
“Do you think he was a relation of yours, Carl?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I would like to think he was. I would like to think that someone of my family had been here before me, and had liked this place as I like it. I think he must have liked it here, because he had his cabin here somewhere, not in Banbury. You would think a bullock team driver who drove every day between this place and Banbury would have had his home in Banbury where there was a railway and more life, but it was not so. He had his home here.”
She looked up at him, smiling. “Would you like to have a home here?”
He nodded soberly. “I would like that very much. For many years I have now lived in camps, always with other men, and for at least another nine months I must still live so. I would like very much to have a little cabin in the woods by a trout river, like this one, where I could come and live at the week-end and keep some books and be alone a little. I would like that very much indeed.”
“You wouldn’t be lonely?”
He shook his head. “I have seen so much of other men, all the time, in all the camps.”
“You won’t want a cabin in the woods in nine months time,” she said. “You’ll be off somewhere qualifying to be a doctor.”
He shook his head. “I do not think that I shall be a doctor again. It costs too much, and three years of study is too long. I do not think that I shall be a doctor.”
“What will you do when you leave the camp, then Carl?”
He smiled. “Perhaps I shall not leave the camp. Perhaps I shall go on as a lumberman.”
“That’ld be an awful waste,” she said. “You ought to do something better than that.”
“It is a good life,” he replied. “I like living in the woods, I like that very much. If I had a cabin on the Howqua here as Charlie Zlinter had, that I could come to at the week-ends, I could be very happy as a lumberman.”
“Until the lumber camp moved on, and it was too far for you to come here for the week-ends,” she said.
“That is the danger,” he said. “I have already thought about that. I think we shall be at Lamirra for another two years, but after that the camp may move.” He got to his feet and helped her up. “I have shown you what we came to see,” he said. “Charlie Zlinter and his dog, who fell into the water and got drowned. Only fifty years ago, and practically forgotten now. I wonder if anybody in Pilsen ever got to hear about it?”
“Somebody would have written, surely?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. Now, I have shown you what we came to see. Let us go back to the centre of the town, and I will take you to the restaurant, and we will see our steak cooked on the grill.”
She laughed with him. “A silver grill.”
“No,” he said. “In this place it would be a gold grill.”
They walked back by the way that they had come. At the meadow by the river he showed her the rough fireplace of a few stones heaped together, remote from any inflammable scrub. He gathered a few dry fallen branches from the gum trees and a handful of bark, and laid the fire and put a match to it; she was amazed to see how quickly and how easily a fire was made in that hot summer weather. He laid the grill across the stones, sprinkled the steaks with a little salt and laid them over the fire; in ten minutes from the time that the fire was lit they were ready to be eaten.
“It’s awfully quick this way,” she said. “And they’re delicious.”
“It is the best way to cook meat,” he said, “especially in this country. The fire is easily made, and the smoke of the gum tree adds a little to the flavour, also. We cook many steaks like this in the forest when we are at work.”
They ate in silence, sitting on the grass in the shade of the big tree where Billy Slim’s father had kept his hotel, where the naughty girls came to work as barmaids, where the bedrooms worked day and night and where small bags of water-worn gold once passed across the bar in payment for drinks and other recreations. In the tree above their heads a ring-tailed possum peeped down at them shyly, wondering if these two intruders into his domain meant danger to his nest.
They lay smoking on the grass when they had finished eating. “Carl,” the girl said at last. “You promised last night that you’d tell me about your strange idea.”
He raised himself on one elbow, laughing, noting the soft curve of her neck with quiet delight. “I have nearly told you that already.”
“What have you nearly told me?”
“That I want to build a cabin for myself, here in the Howqua valley.”
“I know that. But what’s the strange idea?”
“You will say that it is sentimental.”
She raised herself and looked at him, wondering what was coming. “Of course I shall, if it is. It may not be any the worse for that. What is it?”
He looked down at the grass. “It was a stupid little fancy,” he said. “It was nothing.”
“Tell me?”
He raised his head, laughing a little in embarrassment. “It was just this. Here have been many houses, a hundred perhaps, and three hotels at least. I would like if I can to find where Charlie Zlinter had his house, and build mine there on the same place.”
She smiled. “Why do you want to do that, Carl?”
“I do not know,” he said. “I just want to do it. I think we are of the same family, and I have to build my cabin somewhere. I think that I would like to build it there.”
“I think that’s rather nice, Carl.”
“You do not think it stupid?”
She shook her head. “Not a bit. But how would you find out where Charlie Zlinter lived?”
“I would like to go and have a talk with Billy Slim presently,” he said. “But I do not think that he will know, because he was not born at that time, I think it is more likely that I would learn something from Mary Nolan.”
She smiled. “One of the naughty girls.”
He laughed with her. “Yes, one of the naughty girls. But she will not be naughty now. She must be over seventy years old.”
“She’s sort of sterilised.”
They laughed together. “That is right.”
She rolled over and looked at him. “She wouldn’t talk about that time, would she?” She hesitated, trying to choose her words. “I mean, Carl, if she was a naughty girl when she knew Charlie Zlinter, she wouldn’t want to tell people about it when she’s seventy years old.”
He star
She nodded. “I should think you’d have an awful job to get anything out of her. She’d have to know you very well before she’d talk, especially to a man.”
He lay staring over the rippling lights of the river running over stones towards a dark pool. “It is not about personal things that I would ask her. Only about any papers that he might have had in his cabin, or about what happened to his papers and his property after he was dead.”
She smiled. “If she hadn’t been a naughty girl she couldn’t know anything about the inside of his cabin,” she replied. “She probably does know, quite a lot. She might tell another woman possibly, but she’d never tell you.”
He turned to her. “Would you come with me to see her? Perhaps she might talk to you.”
She laughed. “I meant another woman of her age, Carl. Not a young one like me. Not unless I was a naughty girl like she was. You’d want another woman of her age.”
“You are pretty and young, as she was when she knew Charlie Zlinter,” he said simply. “I think she might talk to you when she would not talk to me.”
“I don’t mind going to see her with you,” Jennifer said. It would mean another of these delightful days, if nothing else. “It’s just possible she might open up with me, but I don’t think it’s likely. What exactly is it that you want to know?”
“About any papers that would tell us who he was,” he replied. “If there was a passport, or identity document, or letters, or photographs of home—anything that would say who he was. What happened to those things after he was dead. And where the cabin was.”
“She’d never be able to tell you that now,” she remarked. “The place has changed so much. Billy Slim might be a better bet.”
“We will try him presently,” he said. “We will go across the river and ask him. But will you come with me to see the old lady, one day soon?” If nothing else, it would mean another one of these lovely days with Jennifer.
“Of course I will, Carl. You mean, to Woods Point?”
He nodded. “That is where she lives.”
“How would we get there?”
“Perhaps Jack Dorman would lend the utility again, if I pay for the petrol.”
“You’ll need all your money to pay the fines if you go driving about the country without a licence.”
“I would not mind that, if I could find out the things I want her to tell me.”
She considered for a minute. “We’d better go on Saturday,” she said. “She’s a Catholic, so Sunday might not be a very good day.”
He hesitated. “You would not mind to do this for me?” he asked, a little shyly.
She turned to him. “Of course not, Carl. I’d like to go and see her with you.”
They got up presently, and went to see Billy Slim. The bridge across the river to his homestead consisted of two steel cables slung across the river with planks lashed to them to form a footway; another two cables formed hand-rails with rabbit-wire sides from the hand-rails to the footway. Jennifer paused before going on to it, and turned to Carl. “Do you think this is the same bridge?”
“Very likely,” he said. “It is only fifty years.”
“I’ll have to be careful not to do the same thing.”
“He was drunk, and it was dark, and he had a dog in his arms,” Zlinter said. “It is a little different.”
“It was nice of him to carry the dog,” said Jennifer. “He was probably rather a nice man.”
“Mary Nolan thought so.” She turned and saw a gleam of humour in his eye, and made a face at him.
They found Billy Slim asleep, that hot summer afternoon; there was a stir from the bedroom as they stepped on to the veranda, and presently he looked out at them, clad only in a pair of khaki shorts. “Aw, look,” he said. “I won’t be more ’n a minute.” He came out presently with a shirt on. “Just having a bit of shut-eye,” he said. “I saw you, Splinter, earlier on today, going down the river somewhere.”
Zlinter said, “This is Miss Jenny, who is staying with Jack Dorman.”
“This is the young lady who helped you do those operations at Lamirra?”
“This is the one. How did you get to know about that?”
“Aw, everybody knows about that. I heard about it at the Jig.” To Jennifer he said, “How do you do, Miss. I’ll just put on the kettle for a pot of tea.” He busied himself with a Primus stove.
They sat down at his table. “We have just been to see the gravestones at the cemetery,” Zlinter said. “To see the one that has my name upon it.”
Slim paused, teapot in hand. “I went and had a look at it myself the other day. Charlie Zlinter and his dog, just like you said.”
“I have found out a little more about Charlie Zlinter. He drove a bullock team.” He started in and told the forest ranger most of the information that he had collected from Pat Halloran, omitting the information that Mary Nolan was still alive. “Now I would like to find out where he lived in Howqua,” he said at last.
Billy Slim set the cups before them and poured out the tea. “You mean, where the hut he lived in was?”
“That is what I want to know.”
“You don’t know the street or the number?”
The Czech said, “I do not know anything but that he lived here, in the town of Howqua.”
The ranger sat down at the table with them and stirred his tea. “I never saw the town myself,” he said. “I come here first as just a little nipper some time in the first war, but that was some years after it was burnt through for the first time. The fire went through here in 1909—or was it 1910? I don’t know—one or the other. There wasn’t any town here when I saw the valley first, but there were a lot more stumps of brick chimneys, and iron roofing, and that sort of junk. When I come here, I picked up all the iron there was and used it as walls for sheds, with new iron on the roof; I had a stable built of it, before the second fire came through. The chimney stumps, well, they just went away in time. Fell down.”
“Were the houses in streets?” Carl Zlinter asked.
“Oh my word,” the forest ranger said, “it was all laid out proper. Jubilee Parade ran round by the river from my dad’s hotel by the big tree, and Victoria Avenue crossed it running up towards the path that you came down. Most of the houses were on one of those two streets, but there were several others, I know. I forget their names.”
Jennifer said, “I suppose you don’t know where Charlie Zlinter lived?”
The ranger shook his head, “I don’t. I don’t think anyone could tell you that, not at this distance of time. What do you want to know that for?”
Carl Zlinter said, “It was just a fancy. I would like to build a little hut here, a place where I could sleep when I come fishing and not always trouble you. A little place of one room where I could leave fishing rods and blankets, and perhaps a few tins of food. It is better when you live always in the camp to have a little place that is your own, to come away to sometimes.”
The forest ranger nodded. “Sure,” he said, “you could do that. You’d have to buy an allotment from the Lands Department.”
“What is that?”
“The Lands Department, in Melbourne, they own all the land, and they’ve got it all mapped out as town lots in the valley here. They sell these lots, see? like in any town you buy a vacant lot for a house. Well, if you’ve got a lot and you don’t pay the rates, after a while you lose your allotment, and it goes back to the Lands Department, and they can sell it to someone else.” He paused. “That’s happened with every one of the township allotments here. They’re all back with the Lands Department because everybody’s gone away and stopped paying the rates, but the township’s still mapped out that way, and if you want a bit of land you’ll have to buy a town allotment.”
Jennifer asked, “You mean, if you wanted to put up a hut down by the river you’d
“That’s right. You’d get so many yards frontage on the street, and so much depth.”
They laughed, and the girl said, “Number Twelve, Jubilee Parade?”
“That’s right.”
Carl Zlinter asked, “How much would that cost?”
“Aw, look,” the forest ranger said, “there’s not a lot of competition for town sites in Howqua just at the moment. I wouldn’t pay more than five quid for it, not unless you picked a corner site. They might make you pay ten quid for that, because of having frontage on both streets and being able to do more trade that way.” He grinned.
“How much would the rates be?”
The ranger scratched his head. “I couldn’t rightly say. The Council’s been running on the cheap the last half century. They might make you pay five bob a year for the allotment.”
He could not tell them any more, and presently they left him to his lonely life and went back across the wire bridge to the meadow by the river. It was very still and quiet and beautiful in the valley; the sun was dropping towards the hill, and already the shadows were growing long. “It’s a lovely, lovely place,” the girl said. “Whether you find out about Charlie Zlinter or not, Carl, it’s a lovely place to build a little hut.”
“You like it so much, too?” he asked eagerly.
“I do,” she said. “I think it’s perfectly beautiful.”
They turned from the river and walked slowly up the track towards Jock McDougall’s paddock and the utility. They talked as they went about Paris mostly; Jennifer had spent a fortnight’s holiday in Paris in 1946, and Carl had spent several leaves in Paris in 1943 and 1944, so that though they had seen it under different circumstances it was a bond between them as a place that they both knew and had enjoyed. They came to the utility too soon, and stood for a time looking over the wide forest in the evening sunlight.
At last the girl said, “It’s been a wonderful day, Carl. Thank you so much for taking me.”