I came up to the farmhouse yesterday afternoon. It was a white house with a green roof and green trimmings round the windows. There was a scraggly hedge by the drive but apart from that it was a bare house sitting in the middle of a bare paddock with hardly a tree in sight. Just a poplar tree on each side of the gate. I looked at the house with the idea of drawing a picture. I saw the spirit of it and the spirit was like a little gnarled old man and I felt I could express that too. I was an artist in the old days but I don’t do it much any more.

There were four pebbles on top of the gatepost. That is one of the secret swagman tokens. It would have been put there by another swaggie as a sign of a four star hotel, a good place for hospitality. It was the first time I'd been up this way and those pebbles were a good enough invitation for me, so I went up to the house and knocked on the door. A dog started barking inside and after a minute a woman opened up. There was an old black sheepdog behind her trying to push past to get out at me.

“Get on away there Buck, get on away round the back porch.”

She kicked him in the rump and poor old Buck slunk off down the corridor with his tail between his legs. She had dark hair with grey streaks that straggled down the side of her face. She wore a black skirt and a white blouse that had untidy smudges on it. It wasn't the untidiness of someone who had been working, it was the untidiness of someone who didn't care much about herself. She looked at me in a funny way, like she was a sparrow and I was an odd bit of straw to peck at.

“You couldn't spare a cup of tea and a slice of bread?” This was what I always said when I came to a house.
“Off the road eh?”
“Yes, m'am, yes I am.”
“What's your name?”
“Jack, m'am.”
“Rowdy Jack?”
“Yes m'am.”
“We had a man here knew about you.” Of course swaggers will talk about their mates even if they never see them from year to year. “We take them in sometimes. Come on then. You can leave your swag out here, and take off your boots if you don't mind.”

I put my swag down on the veranda and took off my boots. She'd already gone inside and when I'd got into the hall she'd disappeared. I wondered if she wanted me to close the door behind me. I decided to close it. I didn't want to because I could see you standing out there in the sunlight, my dear, but then you will never come into a house. Faded wallpaper and dark varnished skirting boards. I wasn't used to the dimness as I'd come out of the sun. Then I saw a door at the end of the corridor and went through that into the kitchen.

“I just made a batch of scones” she said. She took one from under the tea towel and put it on an old chipped saucer and gave it to me.

“You can cut it with the knife and put some butter on it.”

Just as though she was talking to a child. Perhaps some of the swagmen that came before didn't know table manners. The scone was warm and the butter had melted.

“Have some jam if you like.”

She pushed over a tin of raspberry jam. It had jagged edges where it had been opened with a tin-opener and there were brown bits round the rim. When I was living with my Shirley, my dear Shirley, we never had jam out of a tin, it was always in a stone jar. You made jam yourself in the big black preserving pan.

The woman poured me a cup of strong tea into a white enamel mug and put milk in it. “You want to work for us for a day or two? He's got a few odd jobs around the house that need doing.”

I ate the scone slowly because I'd had no food for a couple of days “I don't mind doing a few odd jobs,” I told her.

“We been on the farm twenty years now. I keep telling him that's long enough. Time to let the boys take over and get back to town. Nobody to talk to out here.”

The room echoed like the inside of a hollow cave, as though there were other beings whispering and twittering under her talk. I call them household fairies but I know they're not real fairies. I only notice them when I come into a room from outside. It is because of the sounds reverberating off the walls. Outside there are no walls and noise travels to the far distance and never returns. Inside a house is like being in a world under the sea. You have the comfort of civilization all about you, like a baby in a womb, which also lives in the safe and comfortable sea of its mother's water.

“We have to use the range. Time we got an electric. He expects me to cook for him all the time. He won't eat a salad, it doesn't matter how hot it gets.”

The black coal range was burning, which made it very hot for this time of year. The walls were wood. Tongue and groove painted yellow. There was a colour picture of His Majesty on the wall and a photograph of Mount Aspiring. On the mantelpiece there was a “Little Blue Tea Shoppe” tin, a Melrose tobacco tin, a brown vase with withered cornflowers in it and a photo of two young men in army uniform, smiling. She saw me look at it.

“They're my sons. Fighting in the war, in Italy.” I knew the war had been over for a couple of years but I didn't say anything. “Don't know why they have the war. Nothing to do with us here. If they want to have wars over in Germany why don't they keep them to themselves? Just the other day, family down the road, all their sons got killed. Stood on a land-mine. You ever had any kids?”

I was the father of a child that was never born but I said, “No, I haven't”.

“Ever have anything to do with a woman?”

“I was married once.”

“Marriage yeh, I don't know, you get married and it all goes. You want to get married that's all right, that's all right if you don't have children. Run out on you did she?”

“She died.” Of course you would never run out on me, would you Shirley, my dear?

“He's down the other end of the farm, doing fencing. He'll be home soon to listen to the serials on the radio. You'd better have a bath before tea otherwise it's out on the back porch with the dog.”

I don't mind having a bath, but it would take a month of baths now to wash away the dust of the road. I had a clean pair of long johns and socks so I changed them. She said she'd boil the dirty ones in the copper. When I came out he'd arrived back and was listening to the radio.

“Gooday”, he said and shook my hand. He was stocky and he had grey hair. “Bruce Farmer's the name. Farmer by name and farmer by trade. The wife introduce herself did she?”

“No, she didn't.”

“No she wouldn’t introduce herself, would she. Maisy's her name. You want to listen to the radio?”

The serial he was listening to was Dad and Dave. The last time I'd heard an episode was five weeks ago. That was in the shearer's quarters at Atua Station. Dad was a farmer in Snake Gully in Australia and Dave was his son. In that episode Dad had bet a lot of money at the races on a horse called Boots. He needed a hundred pounds to pay for some farm improvements. At the end of the episode we heard the commentary on the race and Boots won, but then the siren sounded to say that there would be an inquiry into the running of the race. Well, I'd missed the bit in between so I never knew whether Boots won or not.

The episode we were listening to now was about who was going to be elected for mayor. We listened to the episode in silence and then we had tea. Lamb stew and potatoes and peas. She ladled it onto our plates from a big pot on the range. Those peas come out of a Wattie's tin. She didn't have any growing in the garden, I'd seen that. She asked him if he'd finished the fencing.

“Take another five days.”

“I want the lawns mowed, and I need some gardening done.” He didn't answer. “The man off the road, he can do it can't he?”

“All right. I'll give you half a crown and shakedown.”

I told him that was all right. Then she started talking about the war.

“They'll be home soon, when the war's over. Then we can go and live in town. Plenty of help around the farm when the boys come home.”

“Yair, all right then.”

“They dropped a bomb on a city in Japan the other day. Blew it all to smithereens. That'll soon finish them off, that'll soon finish the war.”

“Finish it off all right.”

I'd heard about the atomic bomb, but it was a couple of years ago now. Finished the war it did. In Revelation it says that the next judgement of The Lord shall be by fire. It could be that this weapon will cause the burning. She seemed to agree with my thoughts.

“It's God's punishment. Fire and brimstone rained down upon them. Fire and brimstone. It'll rain down on us too and that'll finish us all. It's retribution for our sins.”

I know that to be true. There will always be rainbows but one day a burning will come. After that there will be a black halo around the sun as God's covenant that the flesh will never again be seared by fire.

“Yair, retribution.”

“It's in the Bible. When the seventh seal is opened there will be a hail of fire mixed with blood. A great pit will yawn with smoke and a great furnace.”

Sometimes you get into strange situations like this. She was disturbed in some way and he tried to act as if it were normal, but there was apology in his eyes.

After tea she clattered around for a while with the dishes while Bruce and I listened to serials on the radio. Later she went into the front parlour and I could hear the gramophone playing. We listened to two more programs, then she came back into the kitchen. She'd put on lipstick, which was smeared, and a lace negligee. She had a small etched glass with gin in it and she was tipsy.

“Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly.”

Bruce carried her to the parlour. Then he came back and took me out across the paddock to shakedown in a farm hut. I heard the cry of a morepork, the native owl, come from a small remnant of bush in a gully.

There's a superstition which says that a morepork's cry forebodes somebody dying, but I don't believe that. It is of the nature of moreporks to cry and it is of the nature of people to die. There are such a great number of people in the world that in any one day many of them shall die.

“Could be a bit of rain tomorrow” said Bruce.

“It's pretty dry.”

“Always dry this time of year.”

“I could sleep in that patch of bush where the morepork was.”

“You never know. Could rain tonight.” I looked up to see clouds coming over the moon. “You do best to sleep here in the batch. We used to have a man there in the old days, helping on the farm. Then the boys took it over as a hideout.”

“I saw their photo.”

“Yair did you?”

“I saw the photo on the mantelpiece.”

“Yair, that was them. They went and fought in the war.”

“Are they coming back?”

“We lost them both. In Casino. Both on the same day. Stood on a mine. They never should have stuck together.” He opened the door to the batch. It was dark and musty. “No electricity. There's a candle somewhere.” He had a torch and he rummaged around in the cupboard for a candle and lit it.

“She can't accept what happened. That's why she thinks the war's still on. Nothing you can do about it. Won't even talk to the vicar.”

It was a heavy weight about him. I didn't know what to say. In spite of the difficulties there seemed to be a bond between them.

“Not much light from this candle. Come up to the house first light.”

There were old pictures of Victorian ladies in their undergarments cut out of magazines and pasted on the wall for wallpaper. It was the era of very tight corsets and narrow waists. You would hardly believe it was physically possible. Before bed I read from the Bible as I always do, and then I said my prayers.

“God bless Bruce Farmer and his wife Maisy and comfort them in their troubles. Bless my Aunt Constance and our friend Sissy and her son Neville, and my friend Peter and his wife and children. God bless all people who give shelter to the dusty wayfarer.

Bless all swagmen, may they come to the end of the road in peace. And God bless you Shirley, wherever you may be.

“Amen.”

The room was full of shadows, ghosts that hid in the spaces where the light of the flickering candle did not reach. I undid my roll and settled down. Outside the morepork gave its cry.