Wake In Fright Read Online Free Page B

obtain a beer from one of the women. He retreated to a corner, took out his cigarettes and found he had no matches.The effort of getting back to the bar to buy a box was too great, and he looked about for someone to ask for a light.
    A uniformed policeman was leaning against the wall near him, drinking alone.
    ‘Could I get a light from you?’ said Grant.
    ‘Sure,’ said the policeman, dredging in his hip pocket. He came up with a large lighter fitted with an enormous windshield.
    ‘New to The Yabba?’ he asked, inevitably, holding a great stem of yellow flame to Grant’s cigarette.
    Grant concentrated on lighting the cigarette without singeing his nose before answering.
    ‘Just dropped in for the night,’ he said eventually, ‘flying to Sydney in the morning.’
    ‘Ah. Come from far?’
    ‘Tiboonda…I’m the schoolteacher out there.’
    ‘Oh, the schoolteacher, eh? Let’s see, then, you’re name would be…?’
    Grant let him wait a little while then said, ‘Grant.’
    ‘That’s right. You took over from old Murchison, didn’t you?’
    ‘McDonald his name was.’
    ‘That’s right, McDonald. Well what do you know…my name’s Jock Crawford.’ He held out a large hand.
    ‘John Grant,’ he said. This sort of thing always happened in Bundanyabba. Still, it wouldn’t matter just for that night. This time tomorrow night he would be in Sydney and Bundanyabba would be many miles and six weeks away.
    ‘Will you have a drink, John?’
    ‘Er—well yes, thanks.’ It still distressed him a little when people, upon being introduced to him, immediately called him by his first name. Yet everybody he had ever met in the west did just that.
    A lane through the crowd formed automatically for the policeman and he was served promptly by the hotelkeeper himself. He was back in less than two minutes.
    ‘Do you like the Huntleigh beer, John?’
    ‘Yes. It seems all right. Is it my imagination or is it a bitstrong?’ It was a worn subject, but one Bundanyabba people loved.
    ‘It’s got a hell of a kick. You want to watch it if you’re not used to it. They have to put a lot of arsenic in it to preserve it on the way up here.’
    Grant looked at the beer sceptically.
    ‘Arsenic?’
    ‘So they say.’
    ‘Mmm. What time do the pubs close here?’ He knew the answer, but he was curious about the police view of the trading hours.
    ‘When the crowd goes home. Sometimes midnight, sometimes they don’t close at all…pay nights that is, mostly.’
    ‘The police don’t worry about it?’
    ‘No. What’s the use. Long as they keep the doors shut and don’t make too much row we don’t bother about them. If we did close ‘em at ten there’d only be a lot of sly grog shops spring up.’
    It struck Grant that this was a curious conversation to be having with a constable who was drinking in a hotel while in uniform. Fairly obviously the police were reasonably tolerant. There was nothing to be gained in labouring the point.
    ‘Yes. Well. Um. Will you have another drink?’
    ‘Yeah. Sure.’
    Grant made to take the policeman’s glass.
    ‘Here, give us your dough. I’ll get ‘em quicker than you.’
    Grant submissively handed over a ten-shilling note and the policeman was again back in two minutes with the beer. He gave Grant his change.
    ‘You’ve finished work for the day?’ said Grant.
    ‘Just started. I’m on the hotel beat. Been on it all this week so far. It’s pretty good, y’know; I don’t pay for any of the beer I drink.’
    Grant didn’t quite know how to react, so he just said: ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘I could get yours free too, but it’d be making it a bit thick, wouldn’t it.’
    ‘Yes…yes of course.’
    ‘We do the pubs a bit of good one way and another, y’know,’ said the policeman, by way of justification, Grant presumed.
    He felt himself beginning to expand under the influence of the beer. He hadn’t eaten for ten hours. The heat in the bar was pressing less heavily upon him;