But now he felt that the time had come. He stood quietly and waited for his breathing to settle down. Murdoch, attracted by the unusual quiet of the kitchen, had come out of the vegetable room and stood leaning in the doorway, his puzzled glance on the group round the bright-red carcass on the cutting bench. Randolph caught his eye, but quickly slid his glance away. Just as well I’m going, he thought. This’ll be curtains for Kerry and me.
“Well, I’ll slip over to the phone,” Condamine announced, his voice tripping with suppressed excitement. His small eyes had narrowed and a whiteness tinged his thin nostrils. “I won’t be long, Ziggy.”
“Wait a moment,” Randolph said clearly. Condamine swung round. “If you’re going to jack up, you can count me out.”
An uncomprehending silence enfolded his words and left the kitchen soundless, except for the bubbling of the steamers in the corner. Every glance shifted sharply to him, but no one knew what to say. Condamine was the first to speak.
“You what?” he demanded, his face contorted with inquiry, as though he were unable to believe what he had heard. “What did you say?”
“I said, if you’re going to jack up, count me out.”
“I thought that’s what you said!” Condamine’s words had taken on a thin edge of triumph. “But I don’t quite understand.”
“I can’t make it much plainer,” Randolph told him coldly. “I’ve never been in a jack-up yet, and when I start, it’ll be for a good reason, and something I believe is right. There’s no reason for this one—Hughie was rotten, and old Blind Freddie could have seen it. Carmichael suspended him, and we’ve got no kick.”
Once again thick silence settled on the group around him. It was a situation they had never faced before. Zigfeld’s head turned slowly in an unbelieving stare, and Randolph felt Paramor’s eyes bore hotly into the side of his face.
“God almighty, Randy,” Charlesworth muttered impulsively, “you can’t do that!”
“No?”
“No! We’ve fought for the conditions we’ve got, and we’ve got to keep on fighting to hang on to them!”
“You’ve fought? Who do you think you are, one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs?”
Charlesworth flushed. He knew nothing about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, but he felt the irony in Randolph’s tone.
“Every unionist fights!”
“Bull,” Randolph said flatly. “Men fought in unions, once, and they fought for something that was good, not just more dough they can’t spend, and more time they can’t use except in the pub. Then they were penalized if they joined a union, but now a man’s penalized if he doesn’t join one, no matter what his private convictions might be. And all the fighting that goes on is in the Trades Hall, with pen and ink!”
“What about here?” Charlesworth demanded hotly.
“You don’t call this fighting for conditions, do you?” Randolph retorted. “A piddling little brawl like this when everyone of you knows he’s in the wrong but there’s not one with the guts or the sense to own up to it?” He laughed shortly. “Wake up to yourself, Slim—all you’re jacking up for is the chance of spending a day at the pub.”
The unleashed flood of his words, dammed in so many meal-time discussions, flowed out and sank into the startled faces around. It left him drained of emotion. He stood with his back to the bench and stared at them, his own thin, dark face white and drawn. All he wanted to do at that moment was to get away, out of the stench of fat and onions and drains, free of the maudlin thoughtlessness that had been stewed into their brains and might even in time, be stewed into his own.
“You’d scab,” Condamine said flatly, “that’s what you’re saying, apart from all that bull. You’d scab.”
“That’s right,” Randolph replied as expressionlessly. “I’d scab, and I’d be proud to do it. It takes more guts than to string along, as you’re doing.”
“I think Randy’s right,” Warner said unexpectedly. As Condamine and Paramor swung round on him in amazement, he rubbed the air in front of him, gently. “Don’t get me wrong. If the mob goes out, I go out—but as he says, we haven’t got a leg to stand on. I vote we sit tight until after we have a talk with Torchy. He’ll know what’s what.”
“Pigs———” Condamine began hotly, but Zigfeld interrupted, shaking his head ponderously.
“Ron’s right,” he intoned. “We better wait until we see Torchy. I was a unionist when all of you was still wet behind the ears, an’ I stand for solidarity and for the working man. But I know what’s right, and I know what’s wrong. If we go out and get ditched, it’d be worsen if we never went out. See what Torchy has to say.”
Randolph looked round him, from face to face, while they were talking. This was what was going on all over Australia, in mills, at pit-tops, on wharves, on trains—little groups of men standing round arguing about rights which few of them had done anything to earn or deserve, and which fewer of them would even have recognized as rights. There was something noble in it, in a way, and something pathetic.
Here, in Riverslake, it didn’t matter—all it meant was that a few hundred men might have to scratch for a day or so, or eat whatever the manager and a couple of the staff might be able to rustle for them. But outside—all the other strikes. Couldn’t they see, was there no one to tell them and make them see, what it would all add up to? That if it kept up for a few more years, they’d all be scratching for tucker? Rights would go to the wall.
“Well, what do you think?” Zigfeld said, and waddled away to the range. The very movement of his ponderous bulk seemed to remove the pinnings from the meeting. The men looked round uncertainly. Paramor shrugged.
“All right. Fair enough, if you think so, Ziggy. We’ll wait till Torchy comes down.”
“And in the meantime, work with a scab!” Condamine said viciously.
Randolph’s control snapped. He lunged at Condamine and landed a staggering blow on his ribs. Before he could follow it up, Murdoch grabbed his arms and held them behind him like a vice. Condamine, his face blanched and his breathing unsteady, leaned against the meat-house, his eyes staring with frightened intensity.
“Let me go, Kerry,” Randolph ordered coldly. His quick, hot rage had run away like a flux. “I won’t hit him, unless he wants to come outside, now. Him, or anyone else who feels like it.” He looked at Paramor, but not at Warner or Charlesworth. He knew that there would be no question of fighting with them.
Zigfeld stepped in. “Anyone goes outside,” he said harshly, “can go and get his time, now! We’ll be hard up against it for lunch, as it is. Slim! Put the bloody pies in the oven, and for God’s sake don’t burn them—there’s no time to make any more.”
The men round the cutting bench stood irresolute for a few moments, and then broke up. Murdoch was the last to go. His open brown face could not hide his uneasiness—he opened his mouth once or twice to speak, but said nothing. When he turned and disappeared inside the vegetable room, Randolph picked up a knife and began to work on the carcass. Warner bogged in with him. Presently they were joined by Zigfeld, and the three of them hacked and cut in a strained and unbridgeable silence.
When they had finished Randolph went to his room for some tobacco. He walked along the corridor, stopped at his door, and stood staring. On the cream woodwork, which he had painted himself, someone had scrawled the word SCAB in bright vermilion paint. It was still wet, and from the bottom of each letter beards of red dripped down to the floor.
He laughed outright and went into his room, slamming the door viciously behind him.
Carmichael knew that the suspension of Hughie Mancin might stir up trouble, so just before lunch he went down to the kitchen to see what had happened. As he walked in, Zigfeld was standing beside the range, ponderously stirring a big pot of goulash with a wooden bat. As his arms moved in a circular motion, his long shrunken lips champed rhythmically, and his huge stomach rotated i
n the opposite direction to his arms, rubbing against the shining steel rail round the stoves. As the manager approached him, his little eyes narrowed.
“What, no strike, Ziggy?” Carmichael remarked with mock surprise.
Paramor, carrying a tray of potatoes to the ovens, shot him an openly hostile look, while Charlesworth flung a piece of meat on the cutting bench with a loud smack. The Balt kitchenmen looked on with apprehension and inquiry.
“Not yet,” Zigfeld said sourly. “We’ll put on lunch. After that—we’ll see.”
“Waiting on Torchy?”
“Could be.”
“Well, let someone else stir that garbage for a while, and come into the store with me,” Carmichael ordered, his mocking humour dropping from him like a discarded cloak. His tone and his glance became curt and businesslike. “Even if Torchy makes up your minds for you, and you heroes decide to jack up, there’ll be six hundred men to be fed tonight—and they’ve been working all day.” He laid spiteful stress on the word, looking round the kitchen as he spoke it. Every eye was fastened on him. “I’ll be helping to cook tea with Mr Verity and a couple of blokes from the office. I’ll want to know where the tinned stuff is.”
Zigfeld wiped his hands on his apron and beckoned to Charlesworth.
“Stir this, Slim,” he rasped, “and don’t let the bloody stuff stick to the bottom.” Without speaking to Carmichael, he waddled away towards the store. Carmichael followed him.
“The bastard!” Slim exploded, as the door closed behind them. “He’s got everything worked out, hasn’t he? Him and the blokes from the office—I hope he pours a can of fat over his big bullet head!”
“He won’t be short of helpers,” Paramor suggested. “We’ll have to watch some of these Balt bludgers—they wouldn’t be above scabbing, I bet. And, of course, his mate Randolph—he’ll be in it.”
Murdoch had walked out of the vegetable room in time to hear the remark. A hot flush coloured his face.
“Keep that for when Bob’s around, Para,” he suggested. Randolph was over at the butcher’s shop, arranging for the delivery of the next day’s meat. “I didn’t see you open your trap before. You had the chance.”
“Who the bloody hell are you talking to?” Paramor demanded savagely. He dropped the knife he had been toying with at the cutting bench. “I’ll say what I like and to whoever I like, and if you don’t like it, you can trot yourself outside, smartly.”
“Suits me,” Murdoch replied laconically, making towards the door. Warner, who had been watching them narrowly, stepped in front of him.
“Cut that out in the kitchen!” he ordered. “Get back to whatever you were doing, Kerry, and you too, Para. If you want to have it out, then wait until you knock off. You might have cooled off by then—right now you’re acting like a pair of schoolboys.”
Paramor and Murdoch stared steadily at each other across his shoulder while the rest of the kitchen staff looked on in silence. Before either of them could say or do anything Condamine bounced in through the door.
“I got him this time!” he exulted, as though ringing the union representative was a personal triumph. “He was down at the court, before—at that case of the Balt waitress. He’s coming over, after.”
“Which Balt waitress?” Paramor turned away from Murdoch’s gaze. “What’s that all about?”
“The one at Mulwala. You remember—the one who refused to serve some old crow that went crook at her, and the mob jacked up when the manager tried to make her.”
“God, she was just a slut,” Paramor said. “She was there when I was second there, and she was always kicking up a stink about something.”
“It don’t matter,” Condamine argued. “They’re not there to be treated like dirt.”
“What happened, anyway?” Charlesworth asked.
“They transferred the old sheila to Gorman House, but it won’t do them no good.” Condamine grinned evilly. “Torchy says that the mob there won’t serve her, either. They’ll jack up, first.”
“She’s got to live somewhere,” Charlesworth said. “What’ll she do?”
“Starve, the old bastard,” Condamine said shortly. “Those old crows in the offices get high and mighty ideas about themselves. They want taking down a peg or two—like the Bastard here.”
“He’s going to get the tea himself,” Paramor informed him surlily. “Him and a couple of the blokes from the office. And Verity—he can’t jack up, he’s on the staff.”
“Those bastards in the office got no business poking their bibs in and helping him,” Condamine snarled. “We should jack up right now, and put him properly in the gun—he might find that there’s more to cooking———”
He stopped speaking, staring at Paramor who was looking fixedly past him. He turned quickly and came face to face with Carmichael. The manager had walked in quietly from the store.
“If you’ve got any sense, Condamine,” he remarked coldly, “and this goes for the rest of you, too—you might learn a bit yourselves.”
“What, for instance?” Condamine demanded truculently.
“For instance, how to look silly when you see half a dozen inexperienced men handle what it takes a score of you all day to do. You can jack up now or later—I don’t give two hoots in hell.”
“Why jack up?” Condamine had recovered from his momentary dismay at finding the manager standing behind him. “You just race in the mob from the office and go under our necks.”
“That’s right, the work’s got to be done. Why not?”
“Why not? They’re scabs, that’s what. If they work here, they should be made to join the union.”
“Made to join the union?” Carmichael raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Didn’t you ever hear of the Four Freedoms we’re supposed to have fought for? That is, those of us who did fight.” His hard eyes were riveted on Condamine’s reddening face.
“The war’s over,” Paramor interrupted. “We’re fighting for conditions now.” Parrot-like, he repeated the phrase that had been hammered into his parrot head from a dozen election platforms and a hundred union meetings without ever penetrating any further than his ear-drums. He had only the vaguest idea of the vast implication of the class struggle it implied, but as he mouthed the words he had a momentary vision of an army with banners, himself gratifyingly in the van. The words rolled easily, even grandly, from his tongue, and the picture they evoked pleased him. “We’ve got a fat chance of improving conditions if you run a mob of scabs in every time we jack up.”
“Conditions be damned!” Carmichael said bluntly. “You’re jacking up to keep a drunk on the job, and you know it. In normal times, when food-spoilers like you would be twopence a dozen, I could slit Mancin’s gullet and not one of you’d raise a squeak for fear of being tramped. Wake up to yourselves.” He walked to the door of the kitchen and turned round, derision creasing his face as he surveyed them. “You’re a poor mob. And any man without some sort of loyalty to whoever pays his wages isn’t worth a cracker.”
He shifted his glance from man to man, slowly. Nobody answered him or moved. He stalked through the door, slamming it behind him.
“Cripes!” Charlesworth breathed. “Was he steamed up!”
“The bastard!” Paramor muttered.
“By hell, wait till Torchy comes down!” Condamine promised darkly. “He can’t talk to us like that!”
“Can’t he?” Zigfeld’s long lips worked round his gums, almost as though he were laughing to himself. “He did! Come on, get on with this blasted lunch!”
Carmichael’s anger cooled as he walked up the hill to the office. The hatred that unleashed his outburst in the kitchen was not against the men. He knew them too well, and except for Condamine, liked them. Capable old Ziggy; Paramor, who had been a good soldier and would be a good man if only he would settle down; Warner, who was shrewd and honest and on the ball;
silly, likable, manly Slim.
There was nothing wrong with them, if only they would admit to themselves that one day the hurdy-gurdy would run down and the ragtime music would stop. It had to come, but if they were wise they could all have a little say in how soon it might come and in how severely it might strike. Carmichael had been through a war, a boom, and a depression while most of them were still at school. Then another war, another boom—why not another depression? But try to tell that to men who were picking up twenty or thirty pounds a week for just filling in time!
He made a wry grimace. Try to tell that to anyone! From his own years, he knew old age to be the price of experience, and that most of what finally was learned came too late. At least, he knew just what course the afternoon would take. Torchy Binns would be down before long; they would make a cup of tea in the kitchen and thresh it out, and in about an hour’s time he would be able to go down and learn what they had decided to do. In the meantime, other matters claimed his attention. He paused for a moment on the veranda of the office, looking out over the valley, then disappeared inside.
When he reappeared, an hour later, and walked down towards the kitchen, Torchy Binns was sitting on the steps of one of the stores at the side of the road. He had been reading, but had closed his book to watch a scrawny cat that, having caught a starling, had settled down to its meal only a few feet away from him on a strip of grass. It was quiet in the camp; the supply trucks had all come and gone, those of the staff who were not on duty were up at the Kingston Hotel, and peace and warmth blanketed the rows of shabby huts on the hillside.
Torchy ran a hand easily through his flaming hair and casually lit a cigarette. When Carmichael was close enough to hear him, he called out in full, jocular tones, “Good afternoon, Mr Carmichael!”
“Ah, Torchy!” Carmichael stopped in front of him, grinning. “I wondered how long it’d be before you showed up.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “Been in?”
“Uh-huh.”
Riverslake Page 28