Wake In Fright Read Free Page A

progress that is ingrained for a thousand miles east, north, south and west of the Dead Heart—the beer is always cold.
    The teacher let his finger curl around the beaded glass, quelling the little spurt of bitterness that rose when he saw the size of the head of froth on the beer, because, after all, it didn’t matter, and this poor devil of a hotelkeeper had to stay here and he was going east.
    He drank quickly at first, swamping the dryness in his throat in a flood of beer; and then, when the glass was half empty, he drank slowly, letting the cold alcohol relax his body.
    ‘Will you be wanting your room when you come back?’ asked Charlie, scratching his belly through a tear in the shirt.
    ‘Where else would I stay?’
    ‘Fella before you stayed in a caravan, Jackie: thought you might want a change from the old pub too.’
    The hotelkeeper was mocking him with the sneering irony that western people used on those who show no affection for their desolate territory.
    ‘I’ll be back here.’
    ‘I’ll try and keep your room for you.’ The only permanent guests Charlie ever had were the masters of the Tiboonda school.
    ‘Thanks.’
    If by any chance the hotel were burned down would the Department have to close the school? Or would another small wooden box be hastily thrown up in the school grounds to provide the master with accommodation?
    ‘Having another one, Jack?’
    ‘Thanks.’ He pushed the glass across the stained and grooved bar top and drew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.
    It was almost two hours since he had smoked at the afternoon recess, and the tingling satisfaction supplemented the beer; he looked almost kindly upon the hotelkeeper. But he had to look away soon.
    Charlie had served the second glass of beer and was leaning against the shelves of bottles that served to bolster the illusion that there were those within fifty miles of Tiboonda who would think of drinking anything but beer. He was sucking on the disintegrating remains of a handmade cigarette. Soon he spat the obscene object on to the floor.
    ‘Going on the four-fifteen, Jack?’
    ‘Yes.’ He glanced at the hotelkeeper’s fat and grimy hands and decided he did not want the rest of his beer.
    ‘See you in six weeks, Charlie.’
    ‘Sure, Jack. See you then.’ Charlie grinned without humour or goodwill, as though he knew the schoolteacher’s return to Tiboonda was something he did not want to think about.
    ‘Goodbye, Charlie,’ and goodbye to the stifling back room, the greasy meals prepared by Charlie’s half-caste mistress in the filthy kitchen; goodbye to the sleepless nights and the arid dawns when the soft light gave false promise of a moment’s release from the heat; goodbye to his twenty-eight pupils and their suspicious parents with shamed faces; goodbye Tiboonda, for six weeks at any rate.
    He had his two suitcases packed and waiting in the bar, and he picked them up and walked across to the station.The single line swung out across the plain in a long curve, black against the dust. On the horizon he could see the small, dark cloud that could have been the first finger of a rain cloud. The cloud was almost imperceptibly running down the line, and in half an hour or so the four-fifteen would be in Tiboonda.
    He wished he had stayed in the hotel a little longer because the lean-to shelter on the station offered no determined opposition to the direct beat of the sun; but it was doubtfulwhether the sun was worse than Charlie in any case.
    He took out his wallet, and inspected his pay cheque again. One hundred and forty pounds, six weeks’ wages and district allowance.There should be no trouble changing it to buy his ticket at the airways office, any bank would probably take a Departmental cheque once he established his identity.
    There were twenty pound notes in his wallet as well, the savings from his wages for the past term. He had calculated on saving a hundred, but beer was expensive in Tiboonda, and a man felt he