Sheep in the Valiant

Nancy arrived at Alfonso’s house at eight o’clock Sunday morning carrying a cardboard box containing a red pot.

“Dinner,” she said, “ready for the stove when we come back.” Alfonso wanted to ask her what they’d be eating. Then he wanted to tell her she looked good in her jeans and white blouse. Instead, he offered her a cup of coffee.

Nancy’s red Morris Minor was parked in front of the house. She turned the ignition key. “We are on our way,” she said. The city had the cool, clean, morning smell. The business houses and car yards along Parramatta Road were not yet open. The radio had predicted storms in the afternoon, but Alfonso gazed at a cloudless sky.

“Typical September,” Nancy said. “I’d like to know more about you,” she added a while later.

“What would you like to know?” He glanced at her profile and at her long fingers curved gently around the steering wheel. Then he looked out the window and saw “Welcome to Ashfield” written in flowers on the side of the road.

“Everything, but you can start by telling me how long you’ve been in Australia.”

“Nine years.”

“Do you like it here?”

“I do.”

“And how about the people?”

“Australians?”

“Yes, do you like Australians?”

“Some of them regard immigrants with curiosity, some with mistrust. A man at work says the smell of garlic and olive oil is spreading like a plague. Another says we’re a threat to the Australian way of life. But I have no reason to complain.”

“Your English is good. Where did you learn it?”

“I went to language classes for two years. I read and listen to the radio.”

“And you work in the building industry?”

“Yes. I am a form worker.”

“I’m not sure I know what that means.”

“I’m a carpenter. The company I work for specialises in building office blocks. I make timber structures that are later filled with steel and concrete.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic about it.”

“The pay is good and it requires no thinking, only precise measuring and cutting. ‘Measure twice and cut once,’ as an old friend used to say. But I’m a carpenter of another kind. A cabinet maker, they call it in Australia.”

“Have you tried finding other jobs?”

“A friend and I considered opening a small workshop and making handmade furniture, but then I bought the house and became preoccupied with the renovations and needed the safety of a weekly income to pay for them, so I stayed where I was.”

“You’ve done a good job renovating the house.”

“Thank you. Friends helped.”

They were silent.

“And you?” he asked.

“I’m just a typical girl from the suburbs. After school, I got a job with ANZ Bank, and now I’m with the NRMA. My mother died when I was fourteen, and my father teaches maths at Dulwich Public School. I’m twenty-eight, and I have a younger brother. Do you have family?”

“A mother and a brother. My father died in the Civil War.”

“Terrible. Do you remember him?”

“Not clearly.”

Alfonso had a single vivid image of a faded photograph in his mother’s bedroom. There was also the collective memory of village children waiting for their fathers every afternoon by the side of the road. Some fathers returned. Some children laughed, and others cried and waited until after dark, but he did not tell her that.

Outside the car window, the landscape of car yards, factories and petrol stations gave way to market gardens and open country. An hour into their journey, Nancy left the highway for a smaller road that curled up and down hills covered with bushes and gum trees. They stopped for several minutes at a clearing by the side of the road. Nancy picked wildflowers, and Alfonso walked a short distance to urinate. Leaves swished high above him. There were no bird sounds in the trees. Nearby, a brown lizard watched him intently.

Nancy offered him the flowers to smell before placing them in the back seat of the car. He thought the colours of the flowers in Australia were less vivid than those in his old village, and he was surprised he could not name a single native Australian shrub or flower.

When they were back on the road, he said, “The eucalyptus reminds me of home. We call them the plague from Australia.”

“Why is that?” she asked.

“They take over.”

Nancy laughed. “How did eucalyptus get there?”

“From Italy. Mussolini imported them to drain the swamps.”

“That’s some story. Where did you hear it?”

“In the village.”

“What else reminds you of home?”

“Well, the crows always make me think of home.”

“Another plague from Australia?” She glanced at him with a smile.

“No. Crows are associated with death.”

“Do you believe in those superstitions?”

“I don’t know. I grew up with them.”

They rode in silence, and arrived at the Jenolan Caves close to midday. In the carpark, Nancy stretched her arms and legs. Alfonso stood by, watching the sun being swallowed by a huge mountain of dark clouds.

In the peaceful belly of the caves, people moved slowly, whispering or in silence. He and Nancy walked side by side; Alfonso’s mouth was half open, his eyes focused on the stalactites hanging from the roof and slim stalagmites rising from the floor. Alabaster columns, delightful shawls, drops of water trickling down a wall, leaving sheets of crystal behind. Lovely, he thought.

Afterwards, they walked to the café adjoining the souvenir shop, crowded with tourists like themselves. Nancy ordered ham and chicken sandwiches and tea from the woman behind the counter, and Alfonso paid for them. Sitting opposite one another at a small red-topped table, he wanted to tell her that in the caves he felt small and insignificant, like when he looked at stars at night. He also wanted to say that he liked her, that even tea tasted good in her company, but the words did not come to his lips.

Fat drops of rain fell as they left the café, and thunder rumbled above them, so they took refuge in the souvenir shop. Half an hour later, they braved the rain and ran to the car. They travelled slowly on the road, which was half-obscured under the sheets of rain. The windscreen wipers swiped up and down with a noisy clatter. Now and then, Nancy glanced at Alfonso. On one occasion, she patted his knee. He felt strangely content.

“There was a serious rainstorm the other time I travelled on this road,” Alfonso said, after the rain had eased a little and they could hear each other.

“Really? Tell me more—what happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We have time. Look at the creeping traffic in front of us.”

“It’s not a pleasant story.”

“OK. I’d like to hear it all the same.”

“I don’t know how to begin.”

“I’ll help you get started. I guess you were in a car, right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you driving alone?”

“No. I was with Raul and Salvador.”

“Who are they?”

“You met Raul at the barbecue. He’s short and square, with a moustache.”

“And his wife has tiny eyes?”

“That’s him.”

“OK. So you were driving with Raul and Salvador. Where were you going?”

“We came to buy two sheep.”

“Sheep!” She frowned.

Alfonso paused for a long moment. “As I said, we came to buy two sheep. It was another of Raul’s ideas for getting a cheap supply of meat. We were already purchasing a forty-four-gallon drum of red wine from Griffith every other month, which provided us with fun on bottling day and much cheap wine.

“One Sunday, Salvador called for me at seven, and we drove to Raul’s house in Surry Hills. It was like this morning: clear sky and light traffic. Salvador drove. Raul navigated, using a street directory and a map drawn by his friend Theo Marinopoulos. I sat in the back of the big Valiant. We were excited; we had travelled from the other side of the world but had not once gone this far from our suburbs.

“We reached Parramatta just before eleven. As we left the business district, Raul told us we had one hour to go. Soon, we saw farmhouses and fields. Half an hour later, we were lost, so we drove back and asked directions at the petrol station. The man said, ‘Turn right after the bridge, turn left before the train crossing, and keep going for about a mile.’

“We followed his instructions and got lost again. Salvador blamed Raul and his map. We didn’t talk for a while. Then Raul said that deficient road signs and the Australian way of driving on the left confused him. Salvador laughed loudly, the back of Raul’s neck reddened above the collar of his blue shirt, and I got worried. He has a nasty temper. I also knew that Salvador—people call him ‘the gypsy’ because of his coal-black hair and olive skin—Salvador would not retreat from a fight. He always carried a knife with him.

“The mood in the car was tense, so I suggested that we stop for a bite to eat and a glass of wine. We parked on high ground, several metres from the road, and sat in the shade of a eucalyptus tree with a view of a farmhouse in a valley. There were big brown ants on the ground, and kookaburras in the trees, but they didn’t distract us from the lunch Raul’s wife had packed for us—some bread and chicken legs, a big lump of Edam cheese, and three bottles of wine.

“We pulled back onto the road calmer, but running out of hope that we’d find the place. Twenty minutes later, we saw the ram’s horns on the letterbox, which was the sign we had been searching for the last two hours.

“I can still see Raul rubbing his hands together as he left the car to open the property’s gate.

“The farmer said, ‘You’re late. I have other things to do than wait all day for you.’ He took us to a paddock behind a shed and said, ‘Take your pick and be done with it.’

“We stood around a small enclosure looking at thirty or so sheep staring back at us with vacant expressions. Salvador volunteered to do the selecting, but he took his time poking and prodding before choosing the two he liked best.

“Raul told the farmer to kill them for us, but the farmer said, ‘Twenty bucks a head, as is. Take them or leave them.’”

Alfonso paused in his story.

“And you took them?” prompted Nancy.

“We did. The farmer put the notes in his pocket, told us to make sure we shut the gate, and started for the main house.”

“And then?”

“We tied their legs and put them in the boot of the Valiant, which was too small. The door could not latch and had to be secured with a rope.”

“And you drove away, pleased with yourselves, I imagine.”

“We were. Salvador played one of his tapes. I passed the wine bottle, and Raul said he was looking forward to the skinning and butchering of our bounty. In all the excitement, we didn’t notice that the sky had gone dark until the wind and rain suddenly started hammering the car. Before long, we were merely crawling along, very much like we are now. The car started shuddering, and Salvador said the engine was no good in the wet. A while later, we noticed that people were staring at us, some even blowing their horns. Raul told Salvador not to take any notice of the people, just drive. It was only when the tape finished playing and the rain eased that we heard the sheep bleating in the boot. It was rather unpleasant.”

“For you or the sheep?” Nancy asked without looking at him, her voice tightening.

“Both, I suppose. Raul swore and urged Salvador to keep changing lanes and leave the road as soon as possible. But there was no getting away in the slow-moving traffic, and the sheep kept bleating, and people kept staring.”

“I’m enjoying your discomfort,” Nancy said, almost smiling. “I hope it lasted all the way to Sydney.”

“It did. Salvador mentioned the law, and Raul’s ears turned bright red. He’d been terrified of the police ever since he got on a bus carrying a second-hand door he found at the rubbish tip, and he got in an argument with a passenger who sided with the conductor, and who happened to be an off-duty policeman.

“Eventually, we left the road and stopped in a small car park behind a low building with ads for Coke and Bushells tea and Marlboro cigarettes on the walls, and the doors and windows were all boarded up with corrugated iron. Raul got out, and in no time at all he’d slit the sheep’s throats, and got back in the car still wiping his bloody pocket knife on the rug.”

“Then you were back on the road, drinking wine and playing music,” Nancy said, without looking at him. Alfonso noticed her fingers were tightly gripping the steering wheel.

“Yes, but not for long. The bleating had stopped, but in the crowded traffic, someone told us that there was a trail of blood leaking from the Valiant’s rusty boot.”

They did not speak for a long while. 

This is an extract from a short novel-in-progress, with the working title of Alfonso, set in Sydney between 1962 and 1972. The protagonist is a man from Spain who migrates to Australia to escape poverty.

 

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