Lady With A Mission

“Pim” Short Story:

By Judy Tudor

rE lady was tall, dark and good-look ing. She paused momentarily at the door of the ship’s smoking-room, appraising its contents with a practised eye before she floated forward, a smile of feigned surprise, delight, and something of seductiveness, beginning to spread out ward and upward from her carefully rouged mouth.

Harrison, at a table in a darkened corner of the bar, hurriedly put down his beer and half rose to his feet. “Good morning,” he said.

The lady barely faltered in her stride, but the smile folded up and slid as swiftly as a butter-ball in a hot pan down off the edge of her firm chin. “Oh! How do you do?” Then she was gone; only a drift of perfume was left in the chill eddy of her passing.

Harrison’s companion eyed the re treating back appreciatively. “Who’s that?” he asked,” “Nice shape.”

“Shape’s fine. She was one of my near misses. Mrs. Edna Graham now; was Miss Edna Kean, daughter of old Bill Kean, who used to be my neighbour when I had a claim back of Wewak. I met her when she came to visit him. Good Lord, must be all of four years now. And she is still sore. Nearly asked her to marry me at that time.”

“Well, why didn’t you? On appear ances, you could have gone further and fared worse.”

Harrison shrugged. “Women in the bush —no good!”

“What—the helpless type? She doesn’t look it.”

“Good God, no! Helpless? Quite the reverse, I assure you.”

He chuckled as he dragged an ancient briar pipe out of his pocket and lit up.

“Very self-reliant was our little Edna * * * rE Wewak field, as you know, was not rich. I came to rest on Pigeon Creek, not because I thought I’d make a .fortune, but because I was fed up of wandering around the country and living under a tent-fly in the wet. When I got there old Kean was already located in another creek, about half an hour away.

He was a pretty near neighbour, as neighbours went thereabouts, and we saw a fair amount of each other. Neither of us made much at first, but as our teams worked further up the creeks, the gold got better and we both did well.

A man gets queer fancies in the bush, and I attributed my change of fortune to the advent of Benjamin. Benjamin was a healthy young snake—carpet or python vrriety I imagine—about 8 feet long. I don’t fancy snakes as pets as a rule, but I was convinced that Ben brought me luck. For some reason, he deserted his usual home in a tree and came to live in the thatch in the store house.

I was there working one day when Ben suddenly uncoiled himself from a rafter.

I let out a howl for the house-cook monkey to bring me a gun. He brought it alright but for some reason seemed pleased to see the snake. The rest of the coons were terrified of reptiles of any shape or form, but this lad grinned all over his dial, and said: “Good fella snake.

No good you shoot ’im. Good fella—’im ’e kai-kai a-rat.”

He was so insistent about it I held my hand, although with misgivings, and fully expected Ben, as I began to call him, to turn up one night in my bed. But Ben never came near the house, continuing to lead an exemplary life in the store.

The very day after he introduced him self to us I began to get good gold in the creek —nice chunky stuff. The monkey was there while I was weighing it, and I guess it was his remark: “Good fella gold-money,” in precisely the same tone as he had used to appraise the snake, that started the good-luck notion in my mind.

Apparently Ben had a beneficial effect on the whole district, because Kean told me that his claim was improving too; and, soon after, that he was expecting a visit from his daughter.

HE was a queer old cuss. Maybe he had had an unhappy love-life. He never spoke of a wife, but he’d screwed and scrimped to give this kid a good education and turn her into a school-teacher. Now she had got six months’ leave of absence and was coming to New Guinea.

He built a couple of new houses on the creek before she arrived, and gener ally cleaned up the whole camp. But, somehow, I wondered how a young lady school-teacher was going to fit in with Kean. He’d lived a long time by himself in the bush.

When the ship was due, Kean went out to the beach to meet the girl. I went along, too. I had some business to attend to, but was interested in the daughter as well. Even a daughter such as old Kean would likely have fathered was potentially interesting in that isola tion.

As you see, she was a winner on looks.

She must have been about 25 then, and as soon as I set eyes on her I had an inclination to heel over.

Looking at old Kean and then at the daughter, one immediately began to wonder about the mysterious mother. But Edna did not seem disappointed in her father or his weird appearance. She took him in hand and old Kean just naturally began to shave every day around his bush of a moustache and wear freshly ironed clothes and clean shoes in the evenings, and scrub his finger-nails, and moderate his language.

We used to go from Wewak to But by schooner in those days—twelve hours with the wind in the wrong quarter. But she didn’t turn a hair during the whole of a trip that had most of the men laid out on the deck. She wore tailored khaki slacks—l remember that, becayse she was the only woman I’d seen who had the necessary streamlined behind for the job.

She strolled about on that bobbing cockle shell as though she were out for an air ing on Bondi promenade.

The walk into the Kara was hell. It laid her old man out, and in places made my eye-balls start. But she took it in her stride. Her long slim legs ate up the mountains.

Bush mokas left her alone. The sand flies and mosquitoes didn’t bother her.

She accepted, without comment, the grub biness arid dirt of the two house-kiaps at which we had to put up. She slept like a child in a hard camp bed, and, without any fuss, turned out each morn ing In immaculately fresh shorts, ready for the next leg of the journey.

WE naturally saw a lot of each other in the first weeks. She seemed to take it for granted that I should pay her attention. I have wondered since if she simply took it for granted that we should drift into matrimony And I had my moments, I'm telling you. Sometimes alone in my camp I’d get all hot under the collar at the thought of her and concoct wild schemes for grabbing her by the hair and dragging her off to the District Office to marry her before my inner man ran amok and I dispensed with the blessing

O V. e ,iT W '

But the mood always passed. On the surface she seemed just about perfect, but there was just something that held me back. Maybe she had read too many Pioneering books. She had obviously come there with a mission. That, and the idea of making silk purses out of sows’ ears. But she wouldn’t let it go at that. She wanted to make Gladstonebags and full-sized wardrobe-trunks before she was through.

She had been about a week in the camp when she cleared out all old Kean’s stuff and burnt it, and with the aid of yards of lava-lava, cane from the bush meat-cases, and other oddments she had brought with her, did the whole place over until it looked like the hints section of a woman’s paper.

Old Kean didn’t say anything, but I noticed that he spent more time than ever up at the top of his claim with the boys, or sitting smoking on a fallen tree in the creek.

She had theories about fonri tnn could be healthy ta only by eating the natoalthtogs bush "she rooked nn SnSS °J- i. he from native stuff or P taught her bovs to do it, and tried them out on and ean ana

me. Some of them were fair enough, but most of them were bluddy Then, she had come with the pre conceived idea that natives were simple children, and the methods she had employed as a schoolmarm she transferred m toto to the boys of the two outfits.

Kean’s house-boys were organised from morning to night. They blossomed out m starched white lap-laps with Kean’s initials on them. They were taught to cook the simple nature dishes Edna favoured and were hounded into keepmg the place speckless.

N °t content with that, she often paid my camp flying visits to organise mv household affairs.

T , H , . , ,

unbelievablv^Sdv- 0 SSJ? all

bimrh of, would be a ir^ n p h iov f c^™l^? wers ferns standing Snoni? aor pewhere, . and some mess of an anas or taro stewing over the fire.

The boys, of course, would be sulky, “Missus ’e come,” they’d say sourly went on like this until we suddenly got word that Sands, the ADO, was com tog out on patrol, bringing hls Wlfe - . You .remember his wife—a scrawny piece with a horse face? She wore the nants, and occasionally went 2? p at rol with Sands, for no good reason that we could see. was a bit of a joke right then.

We “ ad all been going down to the kunai country for twelve months or more, as of l en as we needed to, but he had just got around to it, and had then sent out a < 2 rc lf ar totter to say that it was now p ? r £ ec i ly saf e to go along there If we Wl he , d W .

But Edna mus t have been starved for S s ? cie ty °f her own sex. She fastened SV»I“ Ie , S<,nd l They must, of course, stay with her, and the

night they arrived she’d give a dinner party g ve a dmner T T was a few days before the visitation 1 that Edna made Beniamin’s nr quaihtance. We were in the sW together, when suddenly she got her eve on young Ben, coiled round his pet rafter She gave a yelp, and then howled for me to get a gun “He’s alright” I said “Let him h 0 He’s my lucky ’ ” be ' “Don’t be ridiculous'! Panov letting- a vile thing like that wander around Get

at ,? nce r”

. ut 1 wasn’t getting any gun, and she stamped her foot with annoyance Ben evidently feeling the atmosphere unnrn-’

P itious ’ decided the issue for himself and began sliding up into the thateh “There now, he’s gone. Really for a grown man, you are a bit fnni Lucky charm! The only good use to which that snake could be put would oe to make a pair of shoes of him The skin makes excellent leather. I was read tog how to tan it the other day, and thought I might collect a few skins to shoes made when I go south,” ohe had already collected a few small nuggets for a ring, and some Goura leathers for a hat, so I said nothing, and to, led . to turn her attention away from Benjamin. „., i| N th e morning of the day the Sands " were to arrive, I came back to the camp after a Visit to the boys working on the claim. I could see that something was wrong as soon as I got round the bend.- The house-boys were buzzing round the store like wasps, and Edna was there, too.

There was something wrong, alright Th , ey ?S d Just dragged Benjamin’s body out with a stick. Poor Ben, his spirit

must already have departed—his head was almost severed—but his body was still writhing all over the place. The two house-boys were looking scared, and the monkey was weeping unashamed.

There was no need to ask who had shot Ben. The gun was still in Edna’s hand. She was so busy examining the body and probably calculating how many shoes it would make, she scarcely noticed my arrival, and when she did it was only to remark, “I didn’t damage the skin a bit!”

I saw red. “What the hell did you do it for?” At that moment I’d have liked to turn the gun on her. “Why in heaven’s name do you have to come up here interfering with my camp? I told you I didn’t want that snake touched.”

She looked at me in surprise. If it hadn’t been Edna I might have said her mouth fell open. But Edna’s mouth was not given to that. She just stuck her chin out, propped the gun up against the store, and said, stiffly: “Well, if you are going to behave like that about it —”

Then she turned and walked off.

I was too mad to care. I went inside and left the boys to dispose of Ben.

Apparently they were in no hurry to do it, because later when I crossed the yard, the corpse was still there near the store, ants crawling all over its head.

I WAS going to call the boys to come and get rid of it when I noticed one of Kean’s boys with them—there was no mistaking that white lap-lap with the scarlet “W.K.” in front. I guessed the Sands must have arrived, and I remem bered afterwards that I had promised Edna one of my hens—she was going to have the boys doodle it up into some sort of dish. But I forgot about that at the moment in thinking of Ben.

“Hey, you,” I said to the boy. “Take ’im this fella along missus belong you.

Missus ’e like work’im shoe.”

“No got,” said the boy. “Missus ’e no talk-talk along s’nake. Missus ’e talk along catch’im —”

“Maski talk!” I cut in. “You no hear ’im good? Take this fella snake along Missus quicktime. Before missus ’e talk all the same: ‘Me like work’im shoe.’

Now, go on—rouse!”

His jaw fell open and closed two or three times as though he would like to continue the argument. But I must have had a wild look in my eye and finally he swallowed hard, and said, “Yessir.”

I watched him while he went off and got a piece of kunda to lassoo the body just below the half-severed head.

Nothing would induce him to touch it— it’s a wonder that what they did with that snake later didn’t cause mutiny in the Kean’s house-cook, but I guess one of the monkeys was forced to do the job.

The lad eventually got going. The last I saw of him he was walking thoughtfully down the creek, trailing Ben behind him. 1 ALMOST didn’E go to the dinner party, but my rage had worn down a bit by evening, so I went along.

The Sands were there. He as pompous as ever; she looking horsey. Old Kean was depressingly clean, and groomed to the last whisker, but was not saying much. Edna was visibly hostessing, and greeted me correctly if coldly.

There was a bottle of wine, and even old horse-face thawed a bit. Then we sat down to dinner. The soup was some sort of paw-paw concoction; full of vitamins or some damned thing, but tasteless. Then Edna said to the boy who was waiting on table: “Alright, Nusa —bring ’im stew.”

“Pidgin is a frightfully inadequate lan guage,” she turned her best social man

ners back on her guests. “I rather pride myself on the chicken mornay I have taught the boys to make, but they in sist on calling it ‘stew.’ I imagine my father practically lived on stew before I came. It has become part of the boys’ language.”

Old Kean blew through his whiskers and the rest of us made polite noises.

The “stew” arrived and was dished out.

White meat done up in sauce with vege tables and so forth. We began to eat and, after a bit, Mrs. Sands said, “Really, Miss Kean, this is delicious. You must let me have the recipe.”

“Gladly,” said Edna. “But it tastes rather different to-night. More meat, I think. Big fella cockeroo, eh, Nusa?”

Nusa, hovering in the background, and thus brought into the conversation, re plied eagerly: “’lm ’e no cockeroo, Missus. ’E s’nake.”

“Snake? Don’t be a fool. ’E cockeroo!”

“No got! ’E s’nake. Master Jim ’e give ’im me,”

We had all frozen like blood-hounds on the scent, and now with one accord they turned and looked at me.

Nusa proceeded: “‘Missus ’e talk; ‘Go catch’im one fella cockeroo along Master Jim.’ Alright—me go. Master Jim ’e cross too much. ’E talk-talk all the same: ‘Take ’im this fella s’nake along Missus. Missus like work ’im stew.’ Me no like but master ’e cross. Alright, me bring ’im s’nake along house-cook.” He paused and pointed to the half-empty dish. “’lm ’e s’nake,” he said with finality.

There was one of those pregnant silences novelists write about. Old Kean, poking about on his plate, put an end to it with his first uninhibited utterance in months: “Christ A’mighty,” he said, “It sure is snake!” * * * HARRISON knocked the ashes from his pipe. “Well, that’s why she is not Edna Harrison. Schoolmarming had given Edna a fine vocabulary, and I can’t remember much else about that evening except both of the Sands being sick over the bannis. Edna went away

soon after to stay with friends in Rabaul.

That’s where she met Graham.”

He stretched and stood up. “Nice girl —probably a good wife. But what the hell! Take ’em as you like, women and the bush, in one way or another, just don’t mix.”