PAGE 7
The House That Was Never Built
by
“And what happened?” I asked.
“What happened?” he repeated. Then he pulled himself together, as if conscious that he had shown signs of whisky. “Everything was done, but it was no use. She died in a year in a ‘sylum.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know that?” he repeated in a tone of contempt. “How do I know that? Well, I’ll tell you how. My old wife was in service at Brassington’s station at the time–the oldest servant–an’ young Brassington wired to her from Sydney to come and help him in his trouble. Old Mrs Brassington was bedridden, an’ they kep’ it from her.”
“And about young Brassington?”
“About young Brassington? He took a swag an’ wandered through the bush. We’ve had him at our place several times all these years, but he always wandered off again. My old woman tried everything with him, but it was all no use. Years ago she used to get him to talk of things as they was, in hopes of bringin’ his mind back, but he was always worse after. She does all she can for him even now, but he’s mighty independent. The last five or six years he’s been taken with the idea of buildin’ that cursed house. He’ll stay there till he gets short of money, an’ then he’ll go out back, shearin’, stock-ridin’, drovin’, cookin’, fencin’–anything till he gets a few pounds. Then he’ll settle down and build away at that bloody house. He’s knocked about so much that he’s a regular old bushman. While he’s an old bushman he’s all right an’ amusin’ an’ good company;–but when he’s Brassington he’s mad–Don’t you ever let on to my old woman that I told you. I allers let my tongue run a bit when I get out of that hole we’re living in. We’ve kept the secret all these years, but what does it matter now?–I ask you.”
“It doesn’t matter much,” I said.
“Nothing matters much, it seems to me, nothing matters a damn. The Big Brassingtons come down years ago; the old people’s gone, and the young scattered God knows where or how. The Webbs (the girl’s people) are away up in new country, an’ the girls (they was mostly all girls) are married an’ settled down by this time. We kept the secret, an’ the Webbs kept the secret–even when the dirty yarns was goin’ round–so’s not to spoil the chances of the other girls. What about the chances of their husbands? Some on ’em might be in the same hell as Brassington for all I know. The Brassingtons kept the secret because I suppose they reckoned it didn’t matter much. Nothing matters much in this world–“
But I was thinking of another young couple who had married long ago, whose married life was twenty long years of shameful quarrels, of useless brutal recrimination–not because either was bad, but because their natures were too much alike; of the house that was built, of the family that was reared, of the sons and daughters who “went wrong,” of the father and mother separated after twenty years, of the mother dead of a broken heart, of the father (in a lunatic asylum), whose mania was not to build houses, but to obtain and secrete matches for the purpose of burning houses down.
[The end]
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Some definitions and Australian slangs:
anabranch: A bend in a river that has been cut through by the stream. The main current now runs straight, the anabranch diverges and then rejoins. See billabong.
Barcoo-rot. “Persistent ulceration of the skin, chiefly on the hands, and often originating in abrasions”. (Morris, Australian English). Barcoo is a river in Queensland.
billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.