Man Alone by John Mulgan

Author:John Mulgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XII

The new year came in. Rua went away for the night to a dance somewhere to celebrate it, and after that came a hot January and February, and time to muster the sheep again for dipping. It was hard to tell what was happening in the country outside. Little news came into them and only stray bits of gossip. Prices had not risen and the country was as poorly off as ever only that it seemed better in summer for men who had no money and no homes but a camp. There was no end to the slump; there was no end that anyone could see. Men had got past the time when they thought how things would be once this natural calamity had passed. They had settled into an apathy which was not despair but resignation. To Johnson, living there, none of these things mattered any longer. Stenning thought and talked about them sometimes, understood the Government’s moratorium which would ultimately settle the question of his unpaid interest and the mortgage on his farm; he argued, with no one contradicting him, questions of exchange and currency. But neither to Johnson nor to him were these things at all real. What was real was the battle they were both fighting with the land they worked. So long as they could live there and were left alone, it was a battle that they could carry on, even while the world sank outside them.

The small world in which Johnson lived might have gone on like this for a long time, but it broke unexpectedly. It was in February, just before they mustered the sheep for dipping. He was in bed one night sleeping, and it must have been about eleven o’clock and quite dark, when he was wakened by someone calling. What he heard was not just the sounds of loneliness which settled on the farm once the sun had set, the bush-hens calling, or the native owl crying mournfully across the valley, or the sound of wind in rustling manuka. What he heard was more real and closer at hand. He turned over, still sleepily, and then was wide awake, listening. He heard Rua’s voice again screaming shrilly from the house. He lay in bed wondering what he should do and then heard a door banging and the sound of footsteps running. The next moment Rua was hammering on the door of his whare and crying to him to let her in. He got out of bed and opened the door and she fell forward over the steps clutching at his knees. She was sobbing and held on to him so that it was difficult for him to move. He bent down and lifted her up.

“What’s the matter?” he said sharply. “What’s the matter?” and when she did not answer shook her roughly by the shoulders. After a while she got her breath and seemed calmer. He could not see her face. She said:

“He’ll kill me. He said he’d kill me.

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