Happy Valley Read Online Free Page B

Happy Valley, or aimless in the sky above the Moorang road.
    I’d shoot that bird if I had a gun, Clem Hagan said.
    He hadn’t a gun, so he knew he was perfectly safe. It was probably a damn side too far off. You couldn’t tell. But he hadn’t a gun and it was all right.
    It’s a hawk, said Chuffy Chambers, hunched up stolidly at the wheel.
    Go on! You’re telling me something new.
    The mail truck churned its way from Moorang. The road was a sticky yellow-brown, for the little snow that had fallen on the lower slopes had thawed, and the country was visible now in its customary nakedness. The mail truck groaned and laboured on its way. On either side of the roadthere were stretches of grey winter grass, and trees that were grey in winter and summer too. A flock of ragged ewes scampered with a scattering of black dung into a hollow and out of sight. In the back of the truck the mail bags jostled. There were also some bags of corn, Hagan’s luggage, an incubator, and a separating machine. When the truck skidded the separating machine struck the incubator with a loud metallic ring.
    That was a near one, said Hagan, holding the door.
    Yes, agreed Chuffy Chambers, that was a near one right enough.
    He settled over the wheel again. He was not conversationally ingenious. He liked to sit and spit, or smile at other people’s remarks, and when no remarks were made he merely sat. As Hagan was a stranger, to-day he sat. Every day he drove the lorry from Moorang to Happy Valley twice. His chief significance was as a link between two geographical and economic points, though he could also play the accordion and was consequently in demand when there were dances at Happy Valley at the School of Arts. Twice a year there was a dance at the School of Arts, in race week and during the agricultural show. Then Chuffy Chambers sat on the platform with the rest of the band, his yellow hair smoothed down, and the girls smiled at him as they danced past, and he felt extremely satisfied. There was no one could play the accordion so good as Chuffy Chambers, they said.
    Hagan began to shiver. He turned up the collar of his overcoat, which was a greenish grey and fell to his ankles when he stood up. He had never felt so cold. Not even upin the north, he came from New England, had he ever felt so cold. It was a godforsaken part of the world. There was probably worm in the sheep. And perhaps he’d been a fool to come, only the money that Furlow offered was a rise on anything he’d had before. And what you couldn’t do with money! In Sydney, in at the Australia or the Metropole, you weren’t an overseer any more. This was what made you stop to consider money, all those faces in a ring round the bar. So he wrote to Furlow that he’d come. He was going to have a cottage to himself, and a cook, and there were also a couple of jackeroos. He would feel no end important as overseer to jackeroos. But the country, it made you sick, just to look at, not a blade of grass, though they said it was the country for sheep. Still, you always said that once you’d landed yourself in a mess just to make the best of things. He took out a tin of tobacco and started to roll a cigarette.
    It’s cold, he said.
    Yes, said Chuffy, it’s cold.
    Anything doing out here? In Happy Valley, I mean.
    Oh, I dunno. Now an’ again. There’s the races. There’s the pictures once a month in a ’all that belongs to Quongs’.
    Chows, eh?
    Yes. There’s Chows. Quongs is Chows that run the store. They got a good shop. You can get anything at Quongs’.
    Hagan rolled his cigarette. You could never say much for a place that was run by Chows. Chows or dagoes. They always took away the profits from anyone else. He spat out over the side of the truck, to emphasize his dislike of Chows. His fingers were very red as he smoothed out thewhite cylinder that soon would become a cigarette. On the backs of his hands there was reddish hair that had crept out as an advance guard from the