Editor's note - this is unformatted and taken from this archive. I notated the extract I read with a break.
The Pepper-Tree
M y father often spoke about the pepper-tree when we were kids, and it was clear it meant a lot to him It stood for something — like the Rolls-Royce he was always going to buy. It wasn’t what he said about the pepper-tree — my father had no great gift for words — but how he said it that counted. When he spoke of the pepper-tree at Tullama where he had been brought up you saw it clearly, a monster of a tree with long shawls of olive-green leaves m a big generous country-town backyard ‘A decent backyard — none of your city pocket-handkerchief lots , 5 my father said. There were berries on the tree that turned from green to pink with wax- like covers which you could unpick and get the sticky smell of them all over your fingers In this spanking tree there was always, too, a noisy traffic of sparrows and starlings fluttering and hopping from branch to branch
When we lived at Newtown, Sydney, I used to look for % pepper-trees when my father took me for a walk on Sunday afternoons. ‘Look, there’s a pepper-tree,’ I’d say to him when I saw one with its herring-bone leaves
c By golly, boy, that’s only a little runt of a tree,’ my old man would say. ‘They don’t do so well in the city. Too much smoke, by golly. You ought to see them out west where I come from.’
My father was a tall, thin man with melancholy brown eyes and the soul of a poet. It was the poet m him that wanted to own a Rolls-Royce one day.
‘First our own house and then some day, when my ship comes home, I’ll buy a Rolls-Royce,’ he’d say.
Some of his friends thought my old man was a little crazy to have such an ambition.
‘What would you do with one of those flash cars, Peter?’ they’d tease him. ‘Go and live among the swells ?’
DAL STIVENS
34 *
My father would stroke his long brown moustache, which had only a few bits of white m it, and try to explain, but he couldn't make them understand. He couldn’t even get his ideas across to my mother. Only now do I think I understand what a Rolls-Royce meant to him
T don’t want to swank it, as you put it, Emily,’ he’d say to my mother. £ No, by golly. I want to own a Rolls-Royce because it is the most perfect piece of machinery made m this world Why, a Rolls-Royce ’
And then he’d stop and you could feel him groping for the right words to describe what he felt, and then go on blunder- ingly with the caress of a lover m his voice, talking about how beautiful the engine was. . . .
‘What would a garage mechanic do with a Rolls-Royce, I ask you ,5 my mother would say Td feel silly sitting up m it.’
At such times my mother would give the wood stove m the kitchen a good shove with the poker, or swish her broom vigorously My mother was a small plump woman with brown hair which she wore drawn tight back from her forehead.
Like the pepper-tree, the Rolls-Royce symbolized something for my father. He had been born m Tullama in the mallee. His father was a bricklayer and wanted his son to follow him. But my father had had his mind set on becoming an engineer When he was eighteen he had left Tullama and come to the city and got himself apprenticed to a mechanical engineer. He went to technical classes in the evening After two years his eyes had given out on him.
Tf I had had some money things might have been different, by golly,’ my father told me once T could have gone to the university and learnt things properly I could have become a civil engineer I didn’t give my eyes a fair go — I went to classes five nights a week and studied after I came home.’
After his eyes went, my father had to take unskilled jobs but always near machinery 4 1 like tinkering but I had no proper schooling,’ he said once.
He knew a lot and in spite of his eyes he could only have learnt most of it from books. He knew all about rocks and how they were formed. He could talk for hours, if you got him
started, about fossils and the story of evolution. My mother didn’t like to hear him talking about such things because she thought such talk was irreligious. Looking back now I’d say that m spite of his lack of orthodox schooling my father was a learned man. He taught me more than all the teachers I ever had at high school. He was a keen naturalist, too.
Just before the depression came when we were living at Newtown, my father had paid one hundred pounds off the house He was forty-seven years old then. I was twelve.
‘By golly, we’ll own the house before we know where we are,’ he said.
‘Will we?’ said my mother £ At a pound a week we have twelve years to go — unless we wm Tatts ’
‘You never know what may turn up,’ said my old man cheer- fully.
‘I have a good idea what with people losing their jobs every day.’
‘I haven’t lost mine,’ my father said, ‘and what’s more, if I do, I have a way of making some money ’
‘I suppose it’s another of your inventions, Peter ? What is it this time, I ask you ?’
‘Never you mind,’ said my father But he said it gently.
One of my mother’s complaints was that my father was always losing money on the things he tried to invent. Another was that he was always filling the backyard up with junk.
‘What can you do with these pocket-handkerchief lots?’ my father would say. ‘Now, when I was a nipper at Tullama we had a decent backyard — why it was immense — it was as big 5
He’d stop there not being able to get the right word.
Auction sales, according to my mother, were one of my father’s weaknesses. He could never resist anything if it looked cheap, even if he had no use for it, she’d say. Soon after my old man had told my mother he had something in mind to make some money, he went away early one Sunday morning He came back about lunch-time in a motor lorry. On the back of the Ford was a two-stroke kerosene engine. I came running out.
36
DAL STIVENS
He had, too. Both engine and lorry. Thrt cheap. Forty quid the lot, 5 he said. ‘Ten quid down,
boy, and ten bob a week 5 My mother cut up when she heard. ‘Wasting money when it could have gone into the house,
Peter. 5 ‘This’ll pay the house off in no time, by golly, 5 my father
said. ‘And buy a lot of other things, too 5 I knew by the way he looked up and over my mother’s head
he was thinking of the Rolls-Royce which to him was like a
fine poem or a great symphony of Beethoven. All that day he was very excited, walking round the engine,
standing back to admire it, and then peering closely at it. He
started it running and stopped it continually all the afternoon.
Every night when he came home from the garage during
the next week, he’d go first thing and look at the engine. He
had some plan m his mind but wouldn’t say what it was at
first. ‘Wait and see, Joe, 5 he’d said. ‘You’ll see all right. 5 He didn’t let me into his secret for over a week, although
I knew he was bursting to tell someone. In the end, he drew
me aside mysteriously in the kitchen one night, when my
mother was in the bedroom, and whispered, ‘It’s an invention
for cleaning out underground wells, boy.’ ‘For cleaning out wells?’ ‘Underground wells. 5 He listened to hear if my mother was coming back. ‘I’m rigging a light out there tonight, boy, 5 he whispered.
‘Come out later and I’ll show you.’ My father’s idea, he explained later, was to clean under-
ground wells m country towns by suction. You pushed a stiff
brush on the end of the pipe down the sides and along the
bottom of underground wells. The pipe sucked up the silt and
you didn’t lose much water from the well. ‘Every country town has half a dozen underground wells,
boy,’ he said. ‘The banks and one or two of the wealthier
blokes in the town. Just like it was in Tullama. There’s money in it because you can clean the well out without losing
too much water. It’s a gold-mine. 5 It sounded good to me ‘When do you start? 5 I asked. ‘Soon, by golly, 5 he said. ‘The job at the garage won’t
spin out much longer 5 He was right about that, but until the day she died my
mother always had a sneaking idea that the old man had
helped to give himself the sack. It was early m 1930 when
the old man set out m the lorry, heading out west. ‘You’ve got to go to the low-rainfall districts, 5 he said. ‘Like Tullama ?’ I said. ‘Yes, like Tullama, by golly 5 I started thinking of the pepper-tree then. ‘Will you go to Tullama and see the pepper- tree My father stroked his long straggling moustache. Into his
eyes came that look like when he was thinking or talking about
the Rolls. He didn’t answer me for a bit. ‘By golly, yes, boy, if I go there 5 Soon after this he started off. Every week brought a letter
from him. He did well too. He was heading almost due west
from Sydney and I followed the towns he spoke of m my school
atlas. It took him nearly a day on a well, so in the larger
towns he might stay over a week, in the smaller a day or a day
and a half After he had been away for two months he still had a good
few wells to go before he reached Tullama You could see that
he was heading that way ‘Him and that silly pepper-tree l 5 said my mother, but she
didn’t say it angrily. My father was sending her as much
money as he used to bring home when he worked at the
garage. But in spite of what my mother said about the pepper-
tree, she became a bit keen as my father got only two weeks
off Tullama. She made a small pm-flag for me to stick on
the map. About this time a change came in the old man’s
letters home At first they had been elated, but now they
were quieter. He didn’t boast so much about the money he DAL STIVENS 38 was making, or say anything about the Rolls. Perhaps excite-
ment was making him quieter as he got nearer to the pepper-
tree, I thought. ‘I know what it is, 5 my mother said c He 5 s not getting his
proper meals He 5 s too old to be gallivanting off on his own. I
bet he’s not cooking proper meals for himself. And without a
decent bed to sleep m — only the back of that lorry 5 I thought the day would never come, but soon enough my
dad had only one town to do before he would reach Tullama.
His letters usually arrived on a Tuesday — he wrote home on
the Sundays — but round this time I watched for the mail every
day and was late for school three mornings running When a
letter did come I grabbed it from the postman’s hand and
hurried inside with it, reading the post-mark on the run. It
was from Tullama. ‘All right, all right, don’t rush me, Joe,’ my mother said.
‘You and your pepper-tree.’ I read over her elbow. There was only one page. There was
nothing about the pepper-tree. Dad was well and making
money, but he was thinking of returning soon. Only a few
lines. I couldn’t understand it On the next Tuesday there was no letter Nor on the
Wednesday. On the Thursday my father came home. He
turned up at breakfast-time He gave us a surprise walking
in like that. He said that he had sold the truck and engine
and come home by train. He looked tired and shamefaced
and somehow a lot older. I saw a lot more white in his
moustache. ‘The engine was no good,’ he said ‘It kept breaking down.
It cost me nearly all I earned and it was hungry on petrol. I
had to sell it to pay back what I borrowed and get my fare
home.’ ‘Oh, Peter,’ my mother said, putting her arms round him.
‘You poor darling I knew something was wrong.’ ‘Mother reckoned it was the food,’ I said. ‘She reckoned
you weren’t getting your proper meals.’ ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea, Peter,’ my mother said, bustling THE PEPPER-TREE 39 over to the stove and pushing another piece of wood mta' it.
fi Then I’ll get you some breakfast . 5 fi By golly, that sounds a bit of all right , 5 my father said then.
This was the first time since he had walked m that he had
sounded like his old self My mother hurried about the kitchen and my father talked
a bit more T thought I was going to do well at first , 5 he said.
c But the engine was too old. It was always spare parts. It ate up
all I earned 5 He talked on about the trip I had got over my surprise at
seeing him walk in and now wanted to know all about the
pepper-tree. ‘Did you see the pepper-tree, dad ?5 ‘Yes, I saw it all right 5 I stood directly m front of him as he sat at the table, but he
was not looking at me but at something far away. He didn’t
answer for what seemed a long time ‘It was a little runt of a tree, boy — and a little backyard . 5 He wouldn’t say any more than that and he never spoke of
the pepper-tree — or the Rolls — again.
