Who Is Mary Smith?, page 1
Who Is Mary Smith?
Brian Stafford
Austin Macauley Publishers
Who Is Mary Smith?
About the Author
Copyright Information
Preamble
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
About the Author
Brian’s writing style developed from a childhood bookworm addiction and a fascination with personalities. People accused him of being ‘quiet’, whereas he was studying them and analysing their characters. Added to this peculiarity is a retentive memory and an urge to write and you have the basics of an author. Born in Western Australia during WWII, always observant, a soldier at twenty and well-travelled, he maintained his interest in personalities and began to write after retiring from the Public Service. His other interests are history and nature photography.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Brian Stafford (2019)
The right of Brian Stafford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528904162 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528912716 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528960229 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
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Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Preamble
Excerpts from The Gus Schultz Diaries
Entry – Christmas Eve, 2014:
Last year it was a can of tuna cutlets forked into my bowl beneath the kitchen window. Tomorrow – who knows? Maybe virtuous Anna will upgrade to snapper! It’s of little consequence; however, I no longer have the appetite of a moggy in his prime now that I am in my weathered years.
If you squint carefully at me through your monocle, you will perceive, as did the Bard, “That time of year thou maist in me behold,” substituting autumn for advancing age, “when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hange,” any remaining must soon fail and fall, “upon those boughs which shake against the cold,” the numbing affect is proof! “Bare ruined quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.”
And his sage conclusion? “This thou percev’st, which makes thy love more strong, pedants would exchange stronger for more strong,” but, the point is, as you will discover when you examine these extracts, “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”
“To love that well,” he wrote: the core matter of life; passionate love.
Yes, they treat me like an old tom now; yet still superstitiously recalling that I was born in the winter of ninety-six when the seasons began to go haywire. I often wonder whether they connect my arrival with the onset of nature’s vicissitudes…
Anyone with a head for numbers should be able to calculate my approximate age, yet I am still active, even though I spend more time sleeping. And incidentally, I don’t have a diary, simply an orderly memory into which I store significant events and recall them as necessary. I do, however, have an imaginary friend who shadows me wherever I go, and to places where I cannot, and will provide fill-ins for you in my absence. As you are aware, most solitary creatures have such an acquaintance; they are the counsellors, the listeners, the ‘Achates’, that forestall the blinkered life of senility. So much for that; I cannot reveal too much or you will understand the secret workings of cats, the highest creatures. But, because I am ageing, I decided that it was time to relate some of the more interesting events of my youth before too late. My boon, Achates, will assist with the narration when I am unavailable. Code word for today is Mary Smith.
I have opened to the summer of 1999. You will have to stay on your toes from now on!
Chapter 1
I discovered that there was a stranger here while I was making my way back to the homestead. There was little visible evidence but the scent was fresh – and male. He had apparently made his way up from the bottom dam, through the orchard, into the vineyards, and lingered under the outer row of vines where he marked the strainer post with a couple of squirts. From there, he had wandered across to the hayshed, and then along the track to the disused dairy. I hope that he is just in transit. I’ll hide behind a curtain of the weeping peppercorn tree until he emerges. Naturally, I have the advantage: I am downwind with the sun behind me and on familiar ground. In the economy of the Schultz farm, one more cat would be stretching it too far, and another competing male I don’t need! This is my territory and he’s in for a nasty surprise. Ah, here he comes, not the least cautious or wary. What a fool! But then, ginger toms are a bit thick.
Ready to advance? Begin. Adopt the slinking, caterpillar crouch. A moment frozen, ears laid back, unseen – now a quick stalking gait. Freeze again. Hindquarters tensed, snarl at the ready and – strike!
At three years old, in gladiator condition with muscles and sinews tempered by twelve square kilometres of rolling vineyards, farmlands, a blue-gum sanctuary and an unbeaten record for killing hares and rabbits; Gus Schultz, a short-haired tabby tom and undisputed top-cat hits the unsuspecting trespasser in mid-stride. Fur flies, dust is raised, pebbles fling about and then blood, urine and screams that would curdle milk. The pair tear at each other; they swipe and gouge with teeth and claws in a frenzy of attack and retaliation. And suddenly it is over.
He’s gone for the submissive stance; on his side, head turned and a token snarl. He didn’t take long to learn.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
“Cadillac.”
“Cadillac? Weird! Who is your vertical benefactor?”
“I don’t have one anymore. I used to live with a pair that had a baby so the male put me in his car and drove for hours on end and abandoned me nearby. I’m temporarily without benefactors or a patch.”
“Cadillac is an uncommon name; you’re not a Barossa Valley moggy, that’s for sure. Anyway, no room here mate, you’ll have to move way out bush and go feral. So shove off!”
“Who’s got the patch around the bulrush dam – I could pad there?”
“Tiger snakes own it.”
“What about the ruins over the hill by the worked-out quarry?”
“Taken. You really have been scouting around here, haven’t you! Every place is taken and there’s no room for another tom so go bush or I’ll rip your eyes out!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll go. But I get a gut-ache eating lizards and frogs.”
“Eat fieldmice, and grasshoppers especially, they’re good for you.” I move around him and give him a smart clip across the ears and he gets up and backs away. “Head north, Cadillac; a long way north and don’t let me find you around here again or I’ll rip your throat out.”
He starts to move.
“Okay, I’m off. But who are you?”
“I am Gustav Schultz the Third, and don’t you forget it!”
I watch him go and try to forget him but with a name like Cadillac, that’s not easy.
This season’s vintage seems hopeful thus far, and each day Pete goes out and examines his grapes. The time is at hand when all growers get a little giddy. Pete is always mouthing off about the birds – particularly the starlings – because they raid his vines. He has gas guns strategically positioned to scare them off but they don’t have much effect. And the sparrows couldn’t give a rat’s ass about gas guns; they perch on the things between firings! Now and again Pete gets mad and blasts them properly with the shotgun, and although I’m not too fond of starling or sparrow, there is the occasional parrot included for easy picking. And I like parrot. I do. Anyway, it’s milking time now; I must be off to the farm next door where the old, skirted vertical will be calling the cows.
Zimmermann’s is not a dairy farm. It used to be, but now it’s mostly under vines. There are only three old people remaining, but my dad told me that once there were lots of them. They’ve all left home and have litters of their own, and they come back to visit the old people and…hang on…bloody magpies! A whole squadron of them! I’d better get a move on.
That was close. As I was saying: Zimmermann’s is no longer a dairy farm and they got rid of the pigs. They have about forty acres of vines, a rotation of hay paddocks, they keep a couple of milch cows, fatten some lambs and are milking a small herd of goats for cheese, while every year they pick quite a few tonnes of bush-vine Shiraz. So there is some livestock, but it is chiefly vines and the lads come over to do all the work of course. Consequently, the homestead acre has been superbly neglected.
The weeds have claimed everything and the ornamental gardens are beautifully overrun with blackberries and thistles and the bunnies come right up to the sheds. And alongside the sheds where all the rusty milk cans are stacked is the farm machinery graveyard. If you want to spend a lazy hour grooming yourself in the sun, there’s nowhere better than the top of the rusty harvester or the termite-eaten seed box of the cultivator drill. From there, you can keep a casual eye on the lower creation. The old machinery has rusted and the woodwork rotted to perfection and the weeds keep the whole tangled mass united. The Zimmermann mob never adopted the culture of trade-in the old for the new; when a machine was beyond repair it was parked in the graveyard to stand there forever as the old gear, so my dad reckons. It was replaced if necessary, as farming practice dictated, but never traded on the new. The old lamps for new was avoided, for the old keep their history and memories intact. There is the odd brown snake in summer; longnecks, we call them, but apart from that, it is chaotic tranquillity – feline heaven.
The main homestead has a pet door where I can get in and sniff around for a bowl of milk or meat scraps; they stoke the fireplace in the winter and sometimes I like to spend an hour on the soft lounge and let Ma pamper me. And naturally, they have cats of their own but pushovers for me. And now there’s a new one: a freckle-faced, tortoise-shell tart called Olga Zimmermann, which is far too ostentatious for a plat du jour – dish of the day. But first, the milking shed.
“Hello, One-Eye; g’day, Fritz: wrong time of the year for creamy milk.”
They stretch their forelegs, acknowledge me, and settle back to watch the old, skirted vertical milk the jerseys.
“Good afternoon, Gus.” Fritz does all the talking because One-Eye is reclusive. She tolerates him because he was here before she was born, although Fritz has had more pregnancies than a burrow-full of underground mutton. Fritz Zimmermann is no common black cat with white whiskers, and I count it among my higher conquests that we have coupled on several stormy nights. It was Fritz, I should tell you, who sent a brain-damaged blue heeler howling in retreat when the vertical German-sausage vendor called here one day with his wares and his bad-tempered dog!
“It’s the usual sort of milk for mid-summer, Gus. Although One-Eye prefers it thin now – his stomach rejects the rich stuff.”
“Poor old mog,” I say sympathetically. But the mangy old Von doesn’t blink his eye. For a tom with a ten-tiered Prussian report card and a credit list of offspring that would jam your hard drive, Rudi-Harro Zimmerman has drifted into a rather uncelebrated retirement. But then, it’s drilled into the pedigree: take all the bad knocks, the harsh treatment, the misfortunes, and the indignities of old age, and bear them stoically. Stiffen your whiskers, raise your flea-bitten flag and walk on stilted legs and contemptuously ignore the worst the world has to offer. That’s breeding! I, Gustav Schultz the Third, cannot compete on the same level, so I suppose One-Eye can rightly ignore my platitude even though he must bow to me. I’ll never forget last year when the cows went dry and Ma Zimm made some milk out of a packet and offered it to him. Well – the look he gave her!
Ah, here it comes at last. One-Eye is first in while Fritz and I share a saucer. She still smells sweet up close.
Dark-time is the time I prefer; it is when I am most active. I must admit that I have never really understood the attitude of most of the lower creation towards the absence of daylight; and yet this is when the world is most distinctive! Dark-time dispels doubt. Dark-time eliminates the stark colours, leaving the edges and outlines of objects to assume their true proportions. Look at a red flower in the sunlight and see how its periphery is blurred with refraction; the same with the waters of a dam or the colours of a parrot – gorgeous things that they are to eat. In the dark, all objects are sentinel and acute, but try telling that to the verticals! When they venture outdoors, it is with cautious tread and lamplight, as if wanting to resurrect the blinding colours that distort the day. And not just verticals; most birds and animals sleep at night when they should be awake and eating. But if there was no lower sense, or sensibility, there would be no lower creation, and we cats, the highest in creation, would have set no standard of excellence. But as I said: it is something that I have never properly understood. And because no other creature understands cats then the matter is without resolution. But I must not digress, nor should I bore you with unfathomable concepts.
After the milking shed interlude, I make my way back to the home patch; social encounters, whilst necessary, are happier kept to a minimum. The sun is low, I’m pleasantly bolstered with fresh milk and dark-time is at hand. Notice how the sounds of the day diminish with the daylight? Notice also the subtle changes in the attitude of the lower creation, with vulgar exception of course of the verticals, whose raucous bellows during their self-imposed labours are exchanged for dark-time revelry in keeping with their superstitious abhorrence of all things colourless. But seriously, I foresee bubbles may be rising to the boil. My sixth sense is on a par with my natural five. Each day’s noontide shadows lengthen a little; it is the season doldrums when an arbitrary breeze might turn half-circle at any time, bringing scents from sea, the tropics, the desert or the bush, and with it radical change. Not so much a becalmed season as a bewitching one, when a fool’s best course is caution.
I’m sitting on a knoll surveying my headquarters patch. All this is mine, as are two other properties and the lands around them. They are mine by dominance. I shall describe my whole territory to you soon but this is such a beautiful time of day; a brief, pastel twilight is about to fade. I can sit and simply look. The final, flirting beams have tinged the Barossa Hills, and the cloud-line hovering above them has become a flat-bottomed pink raft. Afar, cattle are shuffling and reducing their vocals. The magpies, raucous black-and-white dive-bombers by day, are a decibel quieter as they chase the last grubs. Wood ducks arrow overhead and bank and curve as they descend to their waters, disappearing in the shrouding evening. A dog barks in defiance of the darkness to come while a twittering of swallows is engulfed by the gloom. The galahs are always last to roost; they zigzag from tree to tree and fight for the best perches, hanging upside-down and flapping like flags in a storm. And me? I am adjusting my vision and purpose. Stretch the forelegs and exercise the claws on a log, hold; bring the powerful frame over the axis of the forelegs and stretch the spine and hindquarters. Keep the tail stiff and upright, and bring up the left rear leg and then the right, and settle into an upright squat, sitting to attention.
I’m going to have rabbit tonight; let’s trot to limber up.
My peerless success when hunting rabbits may be attributed to an ability to ignore diversionary prey; there is no point travelling several kilometres just to return without your quarry. Young or undisciplined cats can undo good intentions by occupying themselves with unexpected encounters with lizards or ground birds or their eggs, which the longnecks are generally stalking. And who wants to blunder onto an angry longneck with its poisonous fangs! Not me. I’m hunting early because the moon will rise later, and the darker it is, the better. I can see clearer than my quarry, and I know my territory. I have a purpose which has been forged by experience, therefore I do not have to concentrate on basics or concern myself with ability. Can you imagine how difficult life would be if we pre-supposed failure or over-endowed our quarry beyond its capabilities? It would be frightful! Thankfully, I am Gus, and I know my quarry, all its habits, its reactions, escape mechanisms and its fear. Therefore I shall engage all my skills and gain the advantage.
Ah look, a mix of adults and juveniles munching and playing. Where is the lookout buck? Ah yes, and the breeze direction? Yes. Okay, choose a target; that little doe.
I won’t strike yet because the bunnies are grazing towards my cover thus reducing the distance. They will halt soon to maintain open ground and to reassess the distance to their bolt-holes. The young target doe is nervous: strange how they seem to know. What? What’s that scent? I had it earlier today. Cadillac! What’s he doing here in my territory! He’ll ruin the setup – I’m going in now.
