Redeemed From Time
By: Gramarye and Sweeney Agonistes
Epilogue
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Farewell tonight to all joy and all delight.
Go well and go peacefully.
We can't keep your majesty; be on your way.
Make ready for the last King of May.
Make a cardboard crown for him.
Make your voices one.
Praise a crazy mother's son who loved his life.
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'...the tragic and untimely death of Will Stanton has left a
gap in the academic community
that will be very difficult to fill.'
The week-old newspaper rustled dryly, and the young man who
had been reading it
muttered under his breath, 'However, his rooms are available to
let, and applicants
interested in his post as Reader in Mediaeval History should send
a c.v. to the University
at their earliest possible convenience.'
One or two of the other men at the breakfast table gave him
strange looks, but said nothing.
It was too early in the morning for talking, and with a day's
work in the blistering heat
ahead of them it was better to save their energy. In any case, it
wasn't their place to say
anything - the new man may have had his odd habits and a tendency
to mutter to himself
when he was reading the paper in the morning, but he worked hard
and didn't say much
otherwise. Polite, too. Manners like a real gentleman - whatever
that meant.
The men finished their cups of coffee and trampled out the
kitchen door. There were sheep
to be seen to, fences to check and mend, feed to buy. This wasn't
a ranch for the tourists,
and it wasn't a petting zoo for the kiddies. It was a working
ranch on the ragged edges of
the outback, isolated and nearly uninhabitable during the worst
months. The vet was forty
minutes' drive away, the nearest town a half-hour by Land Rover
over uncertain roads. The
land was tough, the men were tough - even the sheep were tough.
Will absolutely loved it.
It was such a change from Oxford. No tutorials, no squabbles
over funding, no just trying
to get through the day, only to fall into bed exhausted and
unable to think about anything
other than what one was researching at the moment.
Perhaps that last wasn't entirely inaccurate, he thought as he
went out the door, pausing to
stare at the red landscape. The first few weeks had been hard, of
course, and he had fallen
into bed, exhausted, unable to think in general. Which was
probably for the best.
It had been an interesting journey. He had given himself two
days in each city en route to
Perth - flying British Airways, naturally - and Frankfurt had
been interesting, as had
Singapore.
The merlions of Singapore had only left him feeling slightly hollow.
said Will, although it was really more of
a grunt, as he was throwing his weight
against a sheep which absolutely refused to move. It wasn't
that bad. He straightened,
and looked out, shading his eyes. Where are those damned
dogs?
Exasperated, he stood looking down at the sheep, arms akimbo.
The sheep looked back at
him, not giving an inch.
Fine, then, said Will, and hunkered, wiping his
face with a handkerchief. Fall (he still
thought of it that way) was just edging into winter, but the
temperature in the outback never
needed much encouragement to skyrocket. He had lost weight since
coming to Australia,
he knew; working in the upside-down heat had to have been a large
part of it.
It helped not to think about the merlions. Reminders of
another life. This life was
satisfactory - hard work cured a lot of things. Not, of course,
that sheep weren't a reminder
- but Australian sheep were worlds different from Welsh sheep. It
was fitting, as the
Northern Territories were a world away from Tywyn and Clwyd. The
only similarity
between the two places was the sheep.
And even you, said Will to his sheep, are
much more difficult to deal with than I recall
Welsh sheep being. He stood again, half-heartedly stuffing
his handkerchief in his back
pocket. Come on, then. I don't have all day to waste
chasing sheep who ought to know
better.
The sheep stared at him belligerently.
What had the men of Clwyd Farm done? Will tried to recall. He
gave a high-pitched
whistle, and a dark streak came racing across the earth. With a
smile back at the sheep, he
said softly, Please don't make this difficult.
If sheep could scowl, this one was doing it. Will watched the
sheepdog skid to a stop at his
feet, waiting for instruction. He nodded to the sheep, and the
dog was off, doing its job,
herding it back towards the ranch house.
Will followed, trekking across the hard-packed earth, two
lines from something he had
known once running through his head. He sang it softly to
himself:
Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well;
The way will guide one back.
He paused then, and turned, and looked out to the horizon, looking for something.
All he saw was red, red earth. All there was to see.
Will half-smiled. Then he turned and went towards the ranch house.
Dinner, or the evening meal, or whatever one called the
mutton-and-beans-and-other-food-
like-things served on a faded plate, was silent as usual. Then
came evening chores, an
evening mug of tea, and bed.
That night, for the first time in months, Will could not fall asleep easily.
Back in his rooms at the University, he would have lain awake
for a while before getting up
and finding something to read. There was always something that
had to or ought to be
read, articles and new publications and conference proceedings
and always, always, the
never-ending stream of student essays and papers.
But there was nothing like that here, on the farm. There was
the morning newspaper, and
he'd read that already. Other than that, there wasn't much in the
way of reading material at
hand. The other workers were...not of a literary bent, to say the
least.
With a slight sigh, Will slipped out of bed and pulled on some
clothes and his work boots.
Within a few minutes, he was outside and walking, following the
paths he normally walked
during the day. The moon was high, a blank white half-disc edging
toward full, and a few
clouds scudded across the star-filled sky. There was plenty of
light to see by.
He paused, and looked up. All the constellations were
different. Not alien, of course-he
knew them well enough, having flown amongst them in his time,
greeted them formally as
part of his first learnings. Crux was a welcome sight, the four
bright stars of the Southern
Cross as much the solitary traveller's guide as Polaris was to
the men of the British Isles.
Carina was there as well, another reminder of long travel in the
form of a sailing ship's keel.
The stars were at their full brilliance without light
pollution to hide their sparkle. Somehow,
though, the brightness of moon and stars made the night sky look
that much emptier, in
Will's eyes.
He could stay here for a while. He would stay long enough to
get some more colour into
his face, to roughen his scholar's hands, to take the sharp edge
off of his cultivated
Oxbridge-sounding accent. To get his head on straight,
essentially. And after that....
It was his turn to drive into the town at the week's end to
pick up food and other supplies
and to pay the vet's bill-which was higher than normal this
month, with three yearling
lambs sick on top of an older ewe's seemingly chronic mastitis.
He'd seen a small
dusty-looking bookstore on the town's high street, and if he was
going to have any more
sleepless nights like this one he'd need a book for company.
Something light, like a
popular novel or a cheap adventure story. And when he'd finished
that book, perhaps
he'd pick up something different.
A book on sailing, maybe.
Or an old medical manual.
Or a used archaeology textbook, one so old that it might be a relic in and of itself.
Because really, when it came down to it, he had quite a lot of time on his hands.
World enough, and Time.
He glanced up at the stars once more, a quick check of
direction and location that was
more reflex than anything else, and then he turned on his heel
and began the walk back to
the ranch house. This time, when the old song wound its way back
into his head, he let his
voice ring across the open plains and let his feet fall into step
with the music:
'Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.'
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Gramarye and Sweeney Agonistes
18 March 2004