A Kindness Cup Read Online Free PDF Page A

creek, and his animals grew lean and ribby like the grass on which they fed. Yet he laughed from time to time, committed to help others who were luckier, begrudging them nothing he could give.
    Taking tea now beside Dorahy and the boy, his chunky body was propped against the veranda steps. Moths were coming in, unsober with candle-light. Lunt lifted one delicately from his tea.
    â€˜And what were you doing in town?’ Dorahy was asking.
    â€˜Just picking up a few things.’ Lunt drew deeply on his pipe. ‘A bit of tucker, some pipeline and a crank handle,’ But he seemed to have lost interest, even though hope still pummelled him.
    He leant back to look at the boy. ‘How’s your dad?’ he asked. ‘He’s been a great help to me over the years, did you know? Not that I like to lean. But you need a bit of a hand. That’s when you sort ’em out.’
    â€˜Sort what?’
    â€˜Thereal people. You see, I believed in that water. I believe in Eden. And I’ve tried to make one. But all the time I get the feeling the world’s just a dream in God’s eye.’
    What a hope, thought young Jenner, but he said wonderingly, ‘Maybe Eden’s whatever you make. It’s the trying.’
    Dorahy sighed. ‘Pliny had a heating system, you know, a water system, right through his farm home just a few decades or so after Christ. If he could do it then, why not you? Here. Now.’
    Jenner was moved by this idealism, but he could see it was mad impractical stuff. They couldn’t put the water there.
    â€˜Did he now?’ Lunt said with interest. ‘Yes. It was there all right. I only had to tap it. But it came in trickles like tears. It broke my heart when I knew there was enough of the stuff there to float a navy. A great inland sea of it. And now I’m not doing much better.’
    Even the landscape was isolate. Trees, floating moon.
    â€˜You should come by more often,’ Dorahy said, ‘and talk to me. God knows I need it. Is it very lonely out there? Any lonelier than here, I mean?’
    â€˜I still have mills,’ Lunt said simply, ‘sucking away at the creek. It’s almost as useless as it was before, but each has a different voice and at night they yacker between themselves. Drive most people mad, I suppose, but they’re good pals. They keep trying for me.’
    He pulled a bag out of his pocket and fished out a sandwich.
    â€˜You mind if I eat? Haven’t had a bite since this morning. I’m giddy with the world.’
    â€˜There’s some soup going,’ Dorahy said. ‘I was just going to have some with Tim.’
    His kitchen lay at the back, a feverish little lean-to witha small wood stove backed up against a sheet of iron. Heat became personal here. There was a dresser with three cups, a few plates and half a dozen beautifully polished knives and forks that he kept in a box. The small sitting-room expressed its soul through a mass of books and candle-light.
    Dorahy was ahead of them looking out the back door where he spoke to a darkness that moved.
    â€˜Who’s there?’ he inquired of a shifting twilight.
    Standing by the water-tank, Kowaha showed up in the chiaroscuro of the oil-lamp, the pretty bluntness of her face shining in planes and gentle arcs. She smiled merely and Dorahy, shoving his own face into lamp-light, asked, ‘Kowaha? What is it?’
    Stuffed with shyness she could not speak. Stood staring up at him on the top of his steps, giggled a moment, staring at him and the two darker figures who had come in behind him. The solidity of them frightened her.
    â€˜You want tucker?’ Dorahy asked then.
    She shook her head and he was conscious that she was holding something.
    â€˜No tucker. Then what?’
    She gestured with the bundle in her arms.
    Swinging the lamp, he went down to the yard while the other two, breathing in dust and dark, stood waiting.
    â€˜What is it,